


For What Binds Us

by aban_asaara



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Dreams, F/M, Mutual Pining, Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-23
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-03-06 14:03:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 65,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13412835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aban_asaara/pseuds/aban_asaara
Summary: Leaving Hawke was not enough: the night Fenris spent with her is branded into his soul like lyrium into his skin, and even his dreams are not his own anymore.A love letter to the Amell family and a study of the intervening years between Fenris and Hawke’s breakup and reunion.





	1. Revka

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Apocalisse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Apocalisse/gifts).



>   
>  I am so grateful to the amazing [Daria](http://daryshkart.tumblr.com/) for distilling my story into this breathtaking illustration. ♥

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Still troubled by the night he spent with Hawke, Fenris leaves Kirkwall, keeping her favour wrapped around his wrist as a reminder of what should never have been, but what passed between them isn’t so easily forgotten. And he keeps dreaming about the Amell family ever since he left her …

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to [Sasskarian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sasskarian), who has been on the receiving end of all my outbursts of crippling self-doubt for months now and whose feedback has been instrumental in wrangling this story into submission, as well as to [BlondePomeranian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondePomeranian) and [MyrddinDerwydd](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MyrddinDerwydd) for smoothing over the rough edges. ♥
> 
> Please note that this chapter contains implied past abuse, implied past sexual abuse, graphic violence and graphic injury, death, suicide, slavery, drinking, and explicit sexual content.
> 
> * * *
> 
> You’re easier to do than to understand  
> And fallen, I couldn’t hold you  
> Gone too far away from you  
> I wanted you to miss me, pretend you could see me
> 
> And south of my sorrows, I flew away from you  
> To cover my heart with wax blacker  
> Than all the looks cast my way  
> I tried to fly away from you  
> I tried to fly away from you
> 
> You were easier to follow  
> In the city that would become our greatest escape  
> And lying in this bed, I contemplate  
> What I’ve given you of my life
> 
> And south of my sorrows, I flew away from you  
> To cover my heart with wax blacker  
> Than all the looks cast my way  
> I tried to fly away from you  
> I tried to fly away from you
> 
> —[ _C’était salement romantique_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLj1RbilsNA) (It Was Damned Romantic) by Cœur de pirate

He cannot stop hurting her.

Small wonder, that, when he was made for it: a weapon made flesh, annealed in the forge of ancient ritual. Of course she would cut herself on the blade, seizing a sword by the wrong end. So intent is she on seeing the good out of people that she fooled herself—fooled the both of them—into thinking he was more than a sharpened edge of steel.

A mistake. A weapon cares not for the hand that wields it.

He was all too willing to believe otherwise for a night, when she lay against him more pliant than he would ever have thought Hawke capable, his sharp edges forgotten, submerged in the liquid heat of her body. But once the warmth dissolved, and with it the memories, all that remained was folded steel, hammered a thousand times over. Pull the sword from a wound, and the blood comes pouring.

“It’s an Amell tradition,” she said, still flushed, fingers trembling as she handed him a square of folded silk. “A favour for the one you—you’ve grown fond of.”

It burns on his wrist. Every time he looks at it, he sees Hawke, breathless, blushing all the way down to the heave of her breasts, unaware that he was already gone. Hawke trying to hide her tells behind the cards fanned out in her hands, wine stains and some Fereldan ditty on her lips. Hawke mouthing words and drawing out sounds whenever he struggled to read, pride lighting up her eyes so bright it hurt.

He cannot sleep after that. How dear the price he paid for his freedom, and for what? For _this_? For another mage to burrow deep under his skin? He would rip her out of himself if he could—Hawke and the lyrium both—but one would kill him just as well as the other, so instead he keeps her favour like a manacle around his wrist and endures. May he never forget her face as she clutched the coverlet to her bare breasts, pleading him not to leave. May he never forget what he is: a weapon, a blade, a sword. And so he paces around like a caged beast, and after three nights and twice as many bottles of cheap Tantervale wine, at last he drops into the unfathomable depths of a drunken stupor.

And then the dreams begin.

* * *

Her tongue is thick in her mouth, yet Revka tastes the salt and rot of the sea with the burn of each rasping breath. Another gust of wind whips sand into her face, heavy with the sickening stench of brine. She used to love the sight of the Waking Sea from the window of her Hightown estate, backing the white lilies on the sill: the slow-rolling slopes of its waves trimmed with white lace, splintering a sunset into fragments of hearth flames. But then her eldest was taken away, the twins both started having the nightmares, and the sea hasn’t moved her since ice has settled into every little space between her bones.

This close, though? Impossible not to be awed, when the saltspray soars into plumes of white mist, and the sea roars below the ragged crags of the Coast.

She slips on a stone lying in wait under the sand; her knee strikes the toothed edge of a rock, but the scream dies in her too-dry throat and she curls up into a shuddering ball, gasping for breath. Through the flashes of agony crackling up her leg, she considers waiting for the bandits raiding the coast to end it for her—but they would know her for the well-born, well-off lady that she is and ransom her, and without a damned copper left in the coffers of her late father, Maker knows what her husband would resort to in order to find her.

A gift, he calls it, and once she believed him, but that was before it started taking her children one after the other.

Revka scrambles back to her feet, ignoring the pain pulsing under hot rivulets of blood as she starts trudging through the sand again. _It’s war down there_ , she thinks as she risks a glance down the edge of the cliff. The whitewater froths around the twisted, salt-slick spires as though it were boiling. A wave rams the coastline and shatters into mist; another does the same, then another, and another. One day it will be one wave too many, and the crags making their last stand now will collapse into the water as though they were never even there to start with. The sea’s ire will drive the coastline ever further inland, inch by inch, until millennia from now, the land is no more than a mass grave resting at the bottom of the ocean.

_Might as well make it quick, then,_ Revka thinks in the split second before her body shatters against the rocks below.

Fenris wakes with his heart in his mouth, the blood beating against his eardrums louder than if he dunked his head into turbulent waters. _Just a dream_ , he thinks as the world settles back into place around him. It felt so real, though, that for the span of it he knew the drawn, equine face of Revka’s husband, knew her despair as his own when she collapsed into the street and watched the bent back of her firstborn getting ever smaller as the Templars dragged her away.

He drops his head back and catches his breath. Above him, stars twinkle, tiny blue dots speckled against black. Those _damned dreams_. Not that he misses the nightmares that came before—spell-strands slithering along his skin, cold voices and colder eyes, the chafing burn of chains and cages and collars—but at least they would leave him with naught but the ghost of a face come dawn, a waft of dried flowers and tea leaves, the fading echo of a voice too far away to be recalled.

Perhaps this is what cuts so deep: that he should remember those dreams sharp and stark when his own memories elude him, when he remembers only to forget again.

Fenris rubs his eyelids, trying to will away the twinge of a looming headache behind the dots of lyrium etched into his brow. Around his wrist, Hawke’s favour looks almost black in what little light there is in the cave. She would have noticed his absence by now, but whatever hurt she feels must pale compared to the pain he has spared her by leaving.

With a sigh, he drops his hand back to his side and turns back to the night sky, then squints. Above him he sees—not stars, but _glow-worms_.

“ _Venhedis_ ,” he mutters, curling his fingers around the hilt of his sword as he pushes himself to his feet. Then he creeps around the wall of the cave where he _meant_ to rest only for a moment, splays one hand over the moist, mossy outcrop, slick with early-morning dew, and peers into the caves.

Good—the slavers haven’t moved on yet. Fenris has been tracking them for days through the maze of the undercity, the winding caves that drain the Vimmarks into the Waking Sea, then along the torn edge of the same coastline where Revka took her life in his dreams. Half a dozen slavers for a score of resigned, haggard victims; hardly worth the effort of marching them through the city. The heart of their operations had to lie further. By striking too soon he risked the lives of the slaves and the chance to root out the slavers’ nest, though, so he clenched his teeth through each crunch of knuckles against flesh, careful not to make his presence known as he followed the turns of the convoy between the crags of the Wounded Coast.

The sun dipped beneath the horizon and back again before they reached a man-sized opening into the side of the mountain, concealed behind a pile of brush. Inside, faded Tevinter frescoes quivered in the torchlight, lining the path to a high-vaulted cave where slave pens held about threescore slaves: elves for the most part, though humans as well, hunched and haggard, the light long gone out of their eyes.

At least the slavers have let their guard down at some point during Fenris’s impromptu nap. Likely waiting for transport back to the Imperium, bent over a game of dice or dozing on a bedroll in a corner. A handful are standing guard, while another is walking from one pen to the other, scribbling details into a ledger of some kind.

He’s _whistling_ , Fenris notices, and that is all the spur he needs.

The first guard never even knows he’s there. Her neck offers little resistance, and he nudges her body behind a stack of barrels as she collapses into a heap. The second guard sees him, but Fenris closes his fist around his windpipe and crushes the scream right there in his throat. Some of the slaves’ eyes are on him, wild and wide, when he sneaks behind and around the pens, but they remain quiet, watching as he snaps the neck of the man taking notes in his ledger. No one takes notice when the whistling comes to an abrupt end.

“I’ve been telling Jerhan,” one of the slavers says around a mouthful of cheese, “we oughta have people here all the time.” She stabs another piece of cheese off the tray in front of her with her dagger, then pulls it off the point with her teeth. “Else the bloody oxmen will claim the place for themselves while we got our backs turned.”

“Waste of coin,” her companion replies, oiling his blade. “We just booby-trap the Maker-damned—”

His eyes snap up, but too late. Fenris shoves the woman’s head down mid-bite, and she slumps forward, gagging and choking around her blade as blood flows down the hilt. His mouth gives an amused quirk despite himself when the man jerks back and slices two of his own fingers off with his dirk; it clatters to the ground just as Fenris lops his head off with a single arc of his greatsword, and his scream is still reverberating through the cave seconds after his death.

The four dice players scramble for their weapons then, but he is upon them between one breath and the next, felling the first two with the downswing of his sword. The third has only just clutched the hilt of her sword when Fenris reaches to tear the beating heart right out of her ribcage, but she slips on the pool of blood swelling at her feet, and instead ends up with a coil of gut hanging from a gaping hole in her stomach.

“Maker’s _blood_ ,” her companion cries out when she crumbles before him, great, gasping sobs running through her.

Not how Fenris would have preferred to go about it either, but the man charges at him, and he has no choice but to leave her to her agony. He parries the blow and counters with a thrust that sinks his greatsword hilt-deep through the man’s chest; then he shoves the slumping body off his blade before stabbing the point into the woman’s throat, putting her out of her misery.

“M—Mercy,” begs the last one, still muzzy from her nap when Fenris pulls her off her bedroll by the neck.

“Are you awaiting transport for your cargo?” he asks.

“Y—yes, a ship, on the morrow. Please,” she wheezes when his hold tightens around her throat, bare toes scratching at the ground for purchase. Her eyes are bulging out, bloodshot, torchlight glimmering on her blown pupils. “I know—I know how they work, I can—”

Fenris has no need of a slaver’s help to give that ship the welcome it deserves. He closes his fist around her throat; a bubble of red spittle forms between her lips as the life drains out of her eyes. Then he drops her body back onto the bedroll, shakes the blood off his blade as he makes his way to the pens, and—

Threescore pairs of eyes are trained on him, the slaves pressed as far away from him as the pens allow. Fenris looks down at himself: crimson rilles drip down his breastplate and gauntlets; blood and bits of gristle stick to his face and hair. No wonder they shudder as they behold the beast before them, huddled in their cages.

Hawke would have known how to put them at ease with her word-magic, swift and bright as the fire she conjures. For a split second he sees her, something so tender in her half-lidded eyes it couldn’t possibly be real, and the bruise he left on that same soft place when she understood that nothing she could say would hold him back—

He shoves her out of his thoughts.

“I won’t harm you,” he tries, sheathing his sword. “I’ve come to help.”

After a stretch of silence, someone says, “This one has the keys.” His gaze cuts to the source of the voice: an elven woman, pointing to the corpse of the man who was filling out the ledger earlier.

The slaves’ eyes follow his movements as he rummages through the man’s pockets, helping himself to his gold by the same token. The clink of padlocks and chains reverberates against the cave walls, and a tangible wave of relief sweeps through like a gust of wind. A few weep; one man gives a corpse a few hearty kicks, soon imitated by more; others arm themselves with the slavers’ weapons. They pass provisions and waterskins around, bandage wounds, and swap district and village names before heading out in groups. The bravest risk a nod in his direction as they pass by him while Fenris hauls the dead bodies on top of each other.

By the time he’s done, the cave is empty, silent save for his own laboured breathing and the crackling flames of the fires. Sweat pours down his body under the boiled leather and steel of his armour, and he allows himself a moment of respite, shaking the dust off the pages of the ledger he found lying face down on the cave floor. The slaver’s longhand is hard to parse, but Fenris makes out a list of ages, genders, languages spoken, and other details that might raise their price on the slave market. The flames leap in joy at the offering when he tosses the book into the nearest fire; a log shifts, blowing a spray of sparks as the pages curl and blacken before turning to smoke.

He is too battleworn this time to keep Hawke out when she comes calling from the hollowed pit of his memories. She’s made herself at home inside him with the same offhand ease she always has: calling his name as she steps over the one loose board of his rickety staircase, come to bring him a loaf of rye bread or water the potted herbs she put on his sill herself. He remembers standing in his room shortly after they met, stomach roiling before the incongruity of a mage scrubbing his floor while her brother grumbled, carrying the splintered remains of a table outside. Fenris stormed out then, some strange alloy of shame and dread burning through him, and almost left behind whatever had been started there, in fear of the day Hawke would claim her due.

But that day never came, and when she let her mouth fall against his, he knew that it was not a test, not a game, that were he to say no, there would be no lash, no leash, no collar—but he did not want to say no, and so he took what was freely given, and took her.

For the span of a night, he was— _more_ than he is, more than the last remaining shard of something broken beyond recognition. He could almost see what she saw, reflected in the limpid waters of her gaze. How he could have lost himself in that moment, in the flush of her cheeks, in the hitch of her breath, the blue fire that lit up her eyes when for the first time she saw his markings in their entirety: it wasn’t pity that flitted across her gaze then, but _anger_ , and under the renewed heat of her mouth on his, her touch was gentle, fingers dancing between the lyrium brands just like her footsteps avoid the cracks between the stone tiles of the Hightown market.

“Does it hurt?” she asked, a faint echo of his master long ago—except _he_ never bothered to avoid the brands with his touch, hands splayed on his shoulder blades, and that whisper hot on the nape of his neck: “But isn’t it worth it for the pleasure you give me?”

Fenris grabs a torch, and sets himself to the task of burning the slavers’ corpses.

* * *

The crew of the ship is easy to pick off as they stream into the cave by threes and fours, reeling from the discovery of the empty pens and the charred remains of their fellow slavers. Afterwards, Fenris washes the stench of smoke out of his hair, scrubs the blood off his armour and dresses his wounds—but Hawke stays stuck somewhere beneath skin and bone like an arrowhead.

No choice but to ignore her, then. He learns to breathe around her as one does around an old ache, a broken bone not set right, and carries her eastward along the coast. When his thoughts slip and stumble upon her as though on some gnarled root or seaslick stone, she rises screaming through him like a fork of agony, but he clenches his teeth over the pain and keeps on walking.

Sometimes Fenris finds a bone in his path, sun-bleached and sand-smooth, and wonders if it may not have once belonged to Revka.

* * *

“Thirty silvers a night, paid upfront,” the innkeeper announces. Her heavy-jowled face puckered up the instant she spied him strolling into her establishment, and though Fenris knows full well he’s getting cheated, he takes a twisted kind of pleasure in producing the coin she demands. “Huh,” she says, staring at the silver like a cobra before the flute of a snake charmer in the Minrathous slave market. “Stole it, didn’t you?”

“If you won’t have my honestly-earned coin, just say so.”

She snatches the coin right out of his fingers before flinging a key at him. “Second floor, last door to your right. And don’t you go making trouble. Don’t need more ruffians scaring off paying customers,” she grouses under her breath, jotting down some notes into her ledger.

The smell of rancid grease and old wood is an improvement over the Hanged Man’s stench of stale ale and vomit, but at least no one there goggled at him like he was back in that oversized Qunari collar, performing tricks to impress Danarius’s political enemies. The floorboards groan and rattle under his weight as he makes his way upstairs, all too conscious of the patrons’ eyes boring into the back of his skull, while the torches layer his shadow in flickers over the unfurling fiddleheads of the wallpaper.

The satisfaction of forcing the innkeeper to accept his patronage deflates when he sees the room in question: it’s little more than a glorified closet, with a sunken cot in one corner, and a chamber pot he shudders just to look at in the other. The framed still life opposite the window seems rather unnecessary. His three years in Kirkwall have made him too reliant on the simple luxury of a door that locks and a space to call his own; some haystack in a stable or the attic of a warehouse would have served just as well without putting a dent in the coin he took from the slavers.

_Tomorrow_ , he wills himself. Tonight he will allow himself to wash with hot water and sleep off the long road from Kirkwall to Ostwick. The bedding looks clean, at least, so he unslings his sword and removes his armour before lining up the rest of his meagre possessions on the windowsill: a satchel of elfroot, a whetstone, a vial of sword oil—and a handkerchief of scarlet silk.

He sighs, thumbing the crest stitched in glossy black thread on a corner. _An Amell tradition_ , she said, though it couldn’t have been more Hawke, with the silk puckered around it in places and a large clump of thread knotted on the underside. “I should probably stick to mending holes in my socks,” she said, showing him the pinpricks on her fingertips, “but I wanted to give you something a bit more significant than a pair of socks.” Hard to imagine Hawke sitting still long enough to stitch her family crest onto a handkerchief, yet she did so with the help of her mother, who would never have initiated her into the romantic traditions of her house if she knew what Fenris truly is: a sham of a man, a chasm dug out of memories recovered and lost again in the space of a breath. Impossible to ignore it now that he has been whole again, if only for one fleeting moment.

How could he fool himself so? How could he ever think himself worthy of the scion of a noble house when he has nothing in his name, when he doesn’t even _have_ a name other than which was bestowed upon him by the hand that took everything else? Whenever the urge to return to Kirkwall and slink back to Hawke’s heel wells up again, he needs but glance at the slash of scarlet on his wrist to quell it, and so in Ostwick he remains.

Kirkwall is no Minrathous, and Ostwick—though another port town on the mouth of the Waking Sea—is no Kirkwall. A good thing, if only because he hasn’t yet stumbled upon a cabal of blood mages just by taking a wrong turn down an alley, but its vices are less overt and its criminals have enough sense not to advertise themselves as such. It is too strategic a location not to be part of the slave trade, though, but Fenris only manages to pick off some bottom-feeders here and there, would-be slavers and flesh-mongers with little regard for their chattel. He stands out even more here than he did among the Lowtown rabble: passersby give him a wide berth while the city guards clench the hilt of their swords, eyes fixed on his, and his stomach turns to lead when he catches himself slinking along the walls for the first time in years, hopping from shadow to shadow.

Ostwick does not want him, that much is certain. When one of the patrons comes swaggering towards his corner of the tavern, cracking his neck in that peculiar display humans think menacing, Fenris sighs, knowing full well what comes next. “Lost your way? ‘Tain’t the alienage.”

“I’m aware.”

Seated around a nearby table, the man’s friends snigger, sounding like they have few more wits between the lot of them than the average hurlock. “So you’re a funny one,” he says, and Fenris feels dimly proud of himself for deciphering the _Only the Maker can judge me_ tattooed on his arm. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one, then: a knife-ear walks into a bar …”

Fenris gives him the satisfaction of fisting one hand around the collar of his shirt, but the next split second he is incorporeal, a ghost stepping between the realms and back to materialise again behind his opponent. The man staggers forward, his hand now closed around empty air, and starts hollering face down against the tabletop when Fenris yanks his arm back, popping his elbow out of its joint with a loud _crunch_.

“M—My—my arm—” he sobs, cradling the too-sharp angle of his arm against his chest, while his friends half-carry him outside. The door swings closed, and the candlelight shudders in a gust of wind, brightening a flash of mirth under a cowl in a corner of the tavern.

“Ha!” the innkeeper laughs, jowls quivering in satisfaction. “About damn time someone gave them a run for their coin.”

But Fenris isn’t listening. All he can see is the hooded woman seated in the back, leaning towards her companion to whisper into his ear while he watches him too from under his own cowl. _Tevinters_ , he thinks, if their complexion and the embroidered trim on their clothes is anything to go by, but here in the Free Marches, where ships carry anything from furs and tanned leather from Ferelden to weapons and runes from Orzammar, it doesn’t mean a thing. For all he knows they mean to enlist him in a mercenary band, or perhaps have an altogether different sort of proposition in mind, but …

“—and good-looking, too,” the innkeeper continues with a twinkle in her eye, a glimpse of the young woman she must have been once before growing old behind a bar in the arse-end of the Free Marches, as Varric once called Ostwick. “Anything I can get you?”

“Nothing, thank you.” Fenris bows his head, turns on his heel, and heads upstairs under her stupefied stare. He can taste his pulse at the back of his mouth as the eyes of the hooded travelers follow him, but he cannot— _will_ not run up the stairs like a cowed child, so he ignores the strands of ice slithering along his veins as he walks to his room. Then he locks the door behind himself, snaps the pieces of his armour into place, and slings his scabbard over his shoulder. Hawke’s favour is around his wrist, as always, so warm it could be her fingers there, so he tucks his other belongings back into his belt before unlatching the window and holding his breath.

_Ridiculous_ , he thinks to himself, heart in his mouth, one leg swung over the sill. The minutes stretch. Not a sound, except for the din of the main room downstairs filtering between the floorboards and the catarrhal cough of his neighbour through the paper-thin walls. Still, Fenris waits.

His pulse is slowing down again when the hardwood slats just outside his room start creaking under muffled footfalls. The light that streams through the spare inch under the door flickers. Two of them, at least, if he had to guess, but he doesn’t wait for proof one way or the other: he pulls himself out the window and up the gutter, the brittle plaster of the outside wall flaking off under the calluses of his feet as he claws for purchase on the roof tiles with his gauntleted hands.

At last he manages to swing one leg onto the roof, then the other. Fragments of conversation float to him from inside the room through the rush of his own blood against his eardrums. He does not spare a single glance behind as he skitters up and down the weathered tiles of the sloping roof, speckled white with bird droppings, even as Danarius laughs at him somewhere deep inside his skull, voice cloying as syrup. _Look at you, my pet: a toothless stray, running with your tail between your legs. Did you think you could fend for yourself in the wild, away from my guiding hand? Did you think you could be more than what I made you?_ Never again would he scamper off like a rat, Fenris swore. Never again would he cower in the shadows, and yet here he is, running for his life at the first sight of a northern-style trim on a cowl.

Fenris jumps down from the roof onto a balcony, then clutches the iron-wrought bars of the railing to lower himself before dropping to the ground below. Passersby choke back yelps when he lands between them, but he simply melts into the shadows of the nearest alleyway, and runs and runs and runs, strides guided by the distant heave of the sea.

“By the Stone, elf,” says a dwarven sailor—an unusual sight, if Fenris had half a thought to spare about such things—when he reaches the docks, lungs on fire. “You look like you just saw a ghost.”

“If only,” he manages after a couple of tries. His throat is so dry the words grit like sandpaper.

The man considers him for a moment. The mark burned onto his face brands him as casteless, though here on the surface it is rather redundant. Then, as though recognising some fledgling kinship in the brands marring them both, he flicks a thumb over his shoulder, pointing to the full-rigger docked behind him. “We’re off to Antiva City. Could use that big sword of yours against them raiders. You going east, by any chance?”

East. Farther away from Kirkwall, farther away from Hawke, and the sweet-smelling winter of her skin and the laugh lines at the corners of her mouth. Among the dozen or so ships docked in the harbour, at least a few must be Kirkwall-bound. He would be at the gates of her estate before noon, and—

Hawke’s favour glares at him, bright as fresh-spilled blood. He nods his head.

The dwarf gestures him onto the ship. “Then hop on.”

_Isabela would be proud_ , Fenris thinks as he hauls the braces with the rest of the crew, except he will never see Isabela again, and he only helps set the sails to forget that his hands still itch for the hilt of his sword. At least he is on deck this time, instead of hiding in the hold like a rat from the ship’s mouser as he did last time, still drenched in the blood of the Fog Warriors. And at least Hawke lives, though the scarlet silk around his wrist is just as red as her blood would be otherwise. Maybe the day will come when he will not hurt those who would call themselves his friends, but in the meantime the thought offers little warmth as the ship’s bow cleaves the waves, a sharp wind swelling its sails with the same scent of brine and rot that Revka breathed as her last.

Mekas, the dwarven sailor, presses a tankard of grog into his hands. He does not ask what Fenris is running away from, and he returns the favour by not asking what manner of cargo apparently requires the employ of mercenaries. He refuses both a game of Diamondback and a hammock below deck; instead he keeps to the upper deck, sitting back against a crate with a musty blanket that smells of rum and tar wrapped about his shoulders. The moons are so low they look about to fall into the sea, cresting the waves with shards of silver that scatter around the groaning hull. How much simpler would it be to let the cold numbing his fingertips spread to the rest of him, to join Revka and the thousands upon thousands of souls borne by the soundless current underneath—but Fenris has traded too many lives for his own to let them go to waste, and so he turns his gaze upwards instead.

A marrow-deep fatigue settles into the crevices left behind now that the fear has gone out of him. He was not safe in Kirkwall by any stretch of the imagination, but at least there he lived without that fear gnawing at his edges, knowing he had the home advantage and—

_Friends,_ a voice supplies at the back of his mind, and not just any voice but Hawke’s, her skin washed to gold in the candlelight as she reaches across the table to twine her fingers with his. _Having a place where you can put down roots_ —wasn’t that what he told her, years ago? Yet from the start he dreaded that first fragile shoot springing between their palms, and when it bloomed into something more, he uprooted it himself rather than risk it wilting away while he watched.

Fenris tucks the blanket around himself, welcoming the reprieve when his eyelids grow heavy despite the chill. Above him, the sails start to blur: they stretch two shades paler than the sky, amorphous and wide, and through their ghostly billows torchlight flickers, like a fitful autumn sun through leaves … or perhaps like the glow of a campfire splashed against the waxed canvas of a tent …

… the flames outside flit as one with the butterflies inside her belly, yet underneath her pleasure is growing like magic poured ever denser into a spell, Fade-tendrils coalescing hard as a pearl under his mouth. One traitor exhale escapes her throat into a choked moan—no way the whole camp didn’t hear _that_ —but Alistair clenches her hips as she bucks against his mouth, lapping her up with those flicks of his tongue that make her toes curl, and Solona comes loose all at once, the tight-woven heat between her legs unraveling through her into back-arching pulses of warmth.

She clamps one hand over her mouth lest the others hear the cry that rises to her lips, and shudders until the last of the warmth ebbs away into discomfort under Alistair’s relentless enthusiasm. “Alright, you can stop now. _Ow_.”

“Sorry, I got carried away.” Alistair gives her a sheepish grin, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s like fancy cheeses,” he continues, and her eyebrows shoot up her forehead at that, “I mean—not like _that_ , I just meant I like the taste of fancy cheeses, and I like the taste of you, and—Maker’s breath, I should just shut up—”

His breath hitches in his throat when she slides one foot up the hard length of him. “You do that,” she says, quirking one corner of her mouth.

And so he does, running his fingers through the loose waves of her undone braid instead, and a fresh pulse of desire flares inside her when his hand moves down to her breast. His gaze is a tangible weight on her naked body, warm and sweet as butterscotch, and underneath her breastbone the flutter of her heartbeat returns wilder than ever because this much is sure now: she wants him, and everything she couldn’t have in Kinloch Hold and more, everything for which Jowan and Anders risked so much when she didn’t yet understand why. A tryst half-spent watching out for Templars never seemed worth the risk of getting caught, so she’s never known more than nervous kisses stolen on a deserted flight of stairs or behind a library shelf.

Until Alistair, and with the Blight edging ever closer, Solona doesn’t want to waste another night.

“Maker’s breath,” he whispers when she pushes him onto his back before straddling him. Her hair curtains their faces as she bends down to close the distance between their lips. The sword-calluses on his hands are as rough as his touch is gentle along the lines of her body, and despite the warmth flooding her belly anew, gooseflesh prickles her skin at the twitch his arousal gives between her parted thighs.

He tucks her hair back behind her ears and cups her face. “Are you sure about this?” he asks between their mouths. “I just—I don’t want to hurt you, you know. Not ever.”

“I don’t think you could even if you tried, Alistair. Besides, I went through both the Harrowing and the Joining, remember? I’m tougher than I look.”

His lips curl into a smile. “Among other things,” he replies, but something in his eyes rouses an ache somewhere between her ribs. Under her palm, beneath the raised line of a scar on his flushed skin, his heart is beating just as hard as hers, and as she shifts her hips to guide him inside her, all else dims to embers against the searing heat of their bodies: the hushed conversations outside their tent, the plucked strings of Leliana’s lute and the ballad sung under her breath, the babble of the nearby brook and the rustle of the Harvestmere wind through leaves—it all fades away into the wide-open embrace of the night, swirling into nothingness like the rising sparks of their campfire.

* * *

It is no large feat of intellect to figure out the identity of the buyers once Fenris learns that the cargo consists of Orzammar weaponry. The envoy of the House of Crows is a mild-mannered, affable woman, though doubtless her samite robe conceals more poisoned blades than Varric keeps secrets in his notebooks. She orders every single crate torn open, then hums noncommittally at the contents, stopping only to twirl a dagger in the torchlight and run the blade down the coarse hair of Mekas’s arms to leave bald patches in its wake. At last she declares herself satisfied with the merchandise after claiming for herself a wave-bladed dagger whose point draws a bead of blood on her fingertip without effort.

Fenris stands guard while the exchange takes place. He has to suppress a smile: it would drive Danarius mad to see them trade chests of gold ingots for an entire ship’s hold worth of weapons when the deadliest by far is the lyrium-laced elf standing next to them. His dear little Fenris, loaning himself out in exchange for protection or passage out of the Free Marches, no different than the crates of smithed steel changing hands—

_No_. Ever since Fenris left the Imperium, he’s had a choice: he joined Hawke by choice, pragmatic though it were, and he left her by choice, and he only has himself to blame for the string of decisions that led him to Antiva, helping smugglers arm assassins.

Within the hour Mekas and his crew are a great deal richer, and the Crows, a great deal deadlier. Once the crates are stored into horse-drawn carriages and the gold in the sailors’ purses, most of them leave the ship moored in the harbour to drown in the sea of gossamer and golden skin of the nearby Perfumed Spring. Fenris instead spends his shore leave ambling down the cobbled streets beneath the archways and colonnades of the city, carved with _basso rilievo_ of the Fourth Blight or the Second New Exalted March. Antiva is as beautiful as they say, even at night, slashed with the torch-gilt waters of its canals and the pale arches of its myriad bridges. Every place, every name exudes grandeur and romance: the Boulevard of the Seas, the Golden Plaza, the Lovers’ Cove—but cut through the splendor of the harbourside and marketplace to the working district, stifling with the heat of porcelain kilns and the stench of tanned leather, and there the poor starve and beg like anywhere else.

Dawn breaks pale onto the stained-glass spires of the royal palace, a colourless glow in the offing where sea melts into sky. Below the lofty vantage point of Square Giuvana, the harbour is already bustling with activity: boats and barges bob in the waves by the timber jetties where fishwives and ferrymen ply their trade. The full-rigger—the Noble Hunter, as she is called, and Fenris suspects he doesn’t quite get the name—waits, sails lowered. Danarius would never track him down out at sea, were he to join Mekas and his crew. Perhaps one day he could even crest Rivain, return to Minrathous, and sink a blade into his former master’s heart while he sleeps.

Fenris sighs. Idle fancies, he knows. These men are not his friends: they would not bother with him were he not of use to them, much less face a magister of the Tevinter Imperium on his behalf. With Hawke at his side, he might have stood a chance. The fool woman offered her help when he told her that he would find Danarius himself if it came to it—hubris, of course, but his pulse quickened at the thought: nothing was an impossibility when she said it, and for one moment he indulged in the intoxicating belief that together they could storm the gates of the Minrathous estate if they so chose, and come out triumphant.

Of course, once he also believed she would fare well in the Imperium. “No finesse,” Danarius would say, and he would pick her spellcasting apart until her legs gave out, but proper form aside, she would hold her own in the magic duels that rain sparks and blood onto the streets of Minrathous. Time and again Fenris has seen her fall upon her foes like the hurricanes that beat the coast of Seheron, after all, but now he knows better: she is much too guileless, too naive, to thrive in Tevinter. Worse, she might try to fix it as she does every broken thing that she happens upon; in turn it would swallow her whole and spit out her bones, and that would be the end of her.

Bright, brave, _foolish_ woman.

At the end of the world, the sky brightens, swaths of rose and gold unfurling along the clouds stretched above the sea. Whitecaps sigh as they roll towards the city; a flight of gulls darts across the harbour, silhouetted against the barest peak of sunrise, their trills lost among the calls of sailors and the toll of a ship’s bell.

_A weapon is protection, safety, peace of mind_ , Hawke’s voice says at the back of his mind. Even with half of Thedas between them, she was never gone: Fenris has carried her and the dreams along the heaving breaths of the Waking Sea, tucked somewhere under his breastbone.

Perhaps—perhaps he can forge himself anew, he thinks, and then he wonders if there ever was a Grey Warden named Alistair who once swore never to hurt his Solona, if there ever was a woman by the name of Revka who gave herself up to the sea, and a husband who never learned what happened of his children’s mother. And then between the slants of morning that light up the clouds from beneath, he sees Hawke sitting in her armchair with her legs curled under her body, her fingers closed around the spine of the book they last read together; sees the words blur on the page before she puts it back on its shelf, turns to the same sunrise that splashes gold at his feet, and lets her thoughts drift to him.

* * *

Fenris is home in less than a fortnight. _Home_ , he thinks, and he wants to hate how the word just falls into his thoughts, but the knotted buds of the freshly-watered marjoram on the sill shine amidst the swirls of sunlit dust motes, and he can’t think what else to call it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for taking the time to read! ♥ This story has been brewing in my head for a few months now, so I’m excited to finally share it with you all! I’m open to concrit: this was a chance for me to experiment a bit and try something different, so I’d love to hear what you guys think so far. Feel free to find me on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/) and say hello!


	2. Leandra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris returns to Kirkwall and the life he thought he left for good. Making it up to Hawke will not be easy, but he is determined to try, at least—but there is no rest for the wicked, and dark forces are at work in the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait! I had the first draft written for a while and I thought I could clean it up pretty fast, but it not only turned out to be _long_ , the entire thing was also very challenging for me as a writer. Tip of the hat to [Sasskarian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sasskarian) (thanks to whom Varric actually sounds like, well, like Varric), [BlondePomeranian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondePomeranian) and [MyrddinDerwydd](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MyrddinDerwydd) for all their invaluable help and suggestions. ♥
> 
> Please note that this chapter contains references to slavery and abuse, graphic violence, graphic injury, death, and body horror, as well as some headcanons/canon divergence (but nothing too wild, I don’t think!) The rating and tags have been updated as well.
> 
> * * *
> 
> “Blood is power—it connects us.”
> 
> —The Antivan Witch of the Wilds, Yavana

Hawke will send him away, if she doesn’t send Bodahn to do so on her behalf.

The inevitable is stilled in time, minutes stretching far beyond what they ought under Sandal’s unnerving gaze. Fenris waits, trying to ignore the wide, pale eyes riveted to him while he thumbs the label of the wine bottle he brought back from Antiva. A wholly inadequate apology, too little to fill the cracks that he smashed between them.

Sandal points one stubby finger at him, and the smile that stretches across his face is no less unnerving than his gaze. “Enchantment!” he exclaims, just as he has every single time since that accursed Deep Roads expedition when he first laid those too-pale eyes on him.

“Indeed,” Fenris sighs. Perhaps abandoning him to Sandal is the punishment Hawke has devised for him. He will wait as long as it takes, however, and so he ignores the dwarf at the edge of his vision; instead he attempts to focus his attention on the vase of fresh-cut lilies by the window, petals and porcelain suffused with the soft glow of the cloudy afternoon. The estate is quiet, too quiet for the din of his own thoughts, and standing here again for the first time since the night he spent with her, he cannot help but remember that he came to apologise last time as well.

And yet he always hurts her again, each time worse than the last.

The blood stops right in his veins when footfalls draw nearer, hammering the second-story floorboards. Hawke then announces herself with a clatter and a string of expletives before appearing at the top of the staircase, flushed and out of breath. Her expression is so brittle when her eyes land on him that for an instant he thinks she will burst into tears, but even as the floor seems to give way under the diamond-twill rug, he takes one step through the foyer towards her, then another.

“Hawke,” he tries. Her name rolls off thick and unpracticed on his tongue: two moons since it was last in his mouth, and now that he may never taste it again, he wants nothing more than to say it in all the ways he was never allowed before, until he’s worn it out to its bare threads and stitched it back together a thousand times and more.

She clutches the banister and staggers to the staircase. “Sweet Andraste on a stick,” she says before flying down the steps to throw her arms around his neck, and Fenris almost drops the wine bottle when the full force of her embrace sends him reeling backwards. Against his better judgment, he closes his arms around her and breathes her in: she smells of the Orlesian perfumed oils she drips into her bathwater, sweet and warm as honeysuckle in an early summer evening, and her hair, now cut above the line of her shoulders, tickles his cheek.

It lasts but a moment. When she clasps his shoulders and pulls back, her eyes are alight, glaring up at him under her thick fringe of black hair. “How could you?!” she says, and the anger rolling off her stirs the Veil around them like curtains in a breeze. “Andraste’s flaming _arse_ , Fenris, we had the City Guard investigate and everything! I was just about to go to Minrathous myself to look for you there!”

The tips of his ears flame at that. “Minrathous?” he stammers.

Her mouth twists. “You never _once_ stopped to think I might suspect the man who sent a battalion of slave-hunters and blood mages after you over the years?”

A reasonable—even obvious—assumption, yet it had not occurred to him, deadened by the part of him that insisted she would not care beyond the annoyance of losing a swordsman of skill, to miss him more than she might a misplaced bauble. But he should have known better: Hawke _would_ worry about him, his safety, his life, his freedom. Of course Hawke would have gone to Tevinter to save him, the broken half-man who walked out on her not once, but twice.

He drags his gaze to the farthest corner of the room, somewhere behind her shoulder. “I … had not thought of that. I’m sorry, Hawke,” he tries, but the words are laughably insufficient.

“I swear to Andraste, you _better_ be,” she retorts, nostrils flared. “You don’t want to be with me, fine. You don’t want to be in the same city as me, _fine_. But leaving me here to wonder if you’d been enslaved again? How _could_ you?!” she says again, her voice cracking on the last word.

A fearsome thing, her fury. Until this moment he never appreciated quite how much, but he deserves her anger, and if it means she will not cast him out, then he welcomes it. “I never intended to leave this long. I needed time on my own after Hadriana and—” _You,_ he almost said, though the word still blares unspoken between them. Her lips tighten to a thin line. “I hunted slavers working out of the undercity and … kept going. I thought you would be better off.”

She sucks in a breath, and perhaps for the first time since he met her, Hawke has to search for her words. “You’re a handful sometimes, but you belong with us,” she replies after a moment, loosening her grip around the linen of his shirt. “And not just me, you know: Varric had his cousin in Tevinter keep an ear to the ground in case you were taken back there, and then there’s Aveline and Donnic, and Isabela, and Sebastian. Even _Merrill_ was worried about you—oh, and don’t you make that face. We’re your _friends_ , Fenris.”

 _Friends_ , he thinks, and the word still chafes, never sitting quite right. And yet. “The longer I stayed away, the less I felt I could return, until—” Her favour startles him as he runs one hand through his hair, the slash of scarlet so bright in the indolent afternoon light it looks like blood spilled between them. “Until I had to,” he finishes, dropping his hand back to his side, though not before Hawke’s gaze trips over the silken scarf tied around his wrist.

Fists still curled on his shoulders, she tries to look into his eyes, but he lets them drift to the white lilies on the windowsill. “Until you had to?” she repeats in a whisper.

His mettle fails him. He cannot tell her that the lapis-inlaid porticoes of Antiva filled his eyes as never before, and the finest vintages, his mouth, but never the hollow of his palm the way her hand does. He cannot tell her that he returned because he dreamed about two Wardens who swore never to hurt each other, and about a woman whose body has long turned to froth on the Waking Sea. “At the very least, I owed you the truth. I do not expect you to forgive me, however.”

Hawke plucks her hands off his shoulders, the spark of hope gone out of her eyes. She wraps one hand around the neck of the bottle and looks at the label. “So you brought a bribe just in case?”

He chuckles despite himself. “I was in Antiva for some time.”

“Antivans must be as insufferable as they say to make you return to Kirkwall willingly, then,” she jests, but what little mirth she musters crumbles down almost as soon. “Just … please promise me,” she starts, her voice strained under a pleading note he doesn’t recall ever hearing, “promise you’ll tell me if you leave again?”

Something he cannot name twists inside his chest. “I will,” he answers, and it’s because he knows she would not stop him that he knows he will not leave again.

“Then shall we drink to your return while you tell me all about Antiva?”

Her smile is as bright as it is brittle, and how can she trust his hand not to break it when it is all he has ever done? But she will hurt even with half a world between them, so entangled are they now, and so he will see to it that her smile remains even when it is not meant for him alone, just like Satina’s bowstring crescent shines for all through the darkest of nights.

He follows her through the foyer redolent of white lilies, watching the sway of her hair brush her shoulders as she walks.

* * *

Fenris trusts Isabela no farther than the point of his greatsword, but with twice as many mistakes under her belt as there would be notches in her bedpost if she cared to sleep in the same bed most nights, he can at least count on her not to berate him for his own blunders. He finds her at the exact same spot by the bar of the Hanged Man where he last saw her, picking at the grime stuck under her fingernails with the point of her dagger.

“Well, well, look who’s here,” she singsongs, welcoming him back with the same aggravating levity as always. “I might win that bet yet.”

Fenris sighs, slinging his sword off his shoulder and slanting it against the bar. “Do I want to know?”

Her smile turns coy, somehow even more alarming than the gleaming daggers of a grin she usually aims his way. “Probably not. I wouldn’t want to jinx it, anyway.”

He lifts one eyebrow. “Still looking for your relic, I take it?”

“Pfft, who needs some old relic when one handsome elf just walked in to buy me a drink?”

“I’m not—” he starts, but Isabela grabs his arm and waves it at Corff. Fenris sighs. If it costs him a pint of ale or two to buy his way back into her good graces, then so be it.

“Long time no see, Fenris,” Corff says, grinning as he sticks a mug under the spigot of an ale barrel. “You know, for all that people complain about Kirkwall, they always seem to find their way back.”

“No proper swill in Antiva, as it turns out.” Fenris rummages through his belt for a handful of coppers, but Corff waves him off.

“Antiva, eh?” Isabela says as she helps herself to the mug he sets in front of them, smirking. “Worked Hawke out of your system with Selenian vintages and bronze-skinned beauties, then?”

Corff winces. “I sympathise. Can’t be easy getting dumped by a woman like that.”

“Other way around,” Isabela chuckles.

“Oh.” Corff blinks at the spigot, then at him, face scrunched up in confusion. “Wait, what? _You_ left _Hawke_?”

Fenris sighs, dismissing the jab as unintentional. “I did not come to that decision lightly, and this is all I will say about it. Watch your ale,” he adds when the mug starts overflowing, dripping down on Corff’s shoes while he scrambles to twist the tap off.

“Well, if _I’d_ been a slave,” Isabela starts, and Fenris cannot help a preemptive roll of his eyes, “I’d indulge in all the vices and pleasures I’d been denied. Just spend all my time sopping wet on top of some mean little sea-bitch, listening to the grunts of half a dozen sweaty men pushing the capstan bars to weigh anchor and—what, you thought I was talking about sex?” Heat creeps up his face as she flicks the tip of his ear, laughing. “Not that getting the deadlights pounded right out of you is any less fun, I’ll admit it.”

He laughs under his breath despite himself, nodding his head in acknowledgment when Corff returns to his duties after handing him his mug of ale, a plume of foam sliding down the glass. It’s even worse than he remembers—flat and dilute, with a bitter aftertaste—but even as he grimaces through it he cannot deny its comforting familiarity, and the second swallow already goes down much smoother than the first.

He props up one elbow on the bar and leans his cheek against his fist, turning back to Isabela. “Did I miss anything?”

She licks the foam off her lip. “Dare I say not much? The Coterie is eating itself apart, some Templar got murdered during his own murder investigation, and this sweet, naughty little thing from Orlais is now working at the Rose. And I’ve been making good progress on Hawke,” she adds with a flash of teeth and a twinkle in her eye that rivals the glint of her jewelry in the torchlight. Fenris bristles at that despite himself, fingers twisting around the handle of his mug. “Oh, don’t be like that. There’s enough for everyone.”

“Hawke’s affections are not to be trifled with,” he replies, refusing to acknowledge the jape.

“Please, her _affections_ are not what I’m trifling with.” The gold dangling from her ears flecks the countertop with light as she throws her head back and laughs. Then—perhaps realising that she’s the only one laughing—she gives his arm an affectionate squeeze, leaning close enough for him to smell the faint salt of her sweat and the tang of her leathers. “Aw, she’ll be fine. She knows not to get her hopes up with me, at least,” she says with a shrug. “Not that bolting wasn’t the only sensible thing to do, and besides, better you than some tramp like me who’d have bolted with her heart _and_ her valuables, then bragged about it afterwards. At least you look suitably contrite about it.”

Fenris forces himself to take a long swig of ale before saying anything. “And you wonder why I’m wary of you. I hurt her, yes. It does not give you the right to take advantage of her. Consider yourself warned.”

“See, this is why I don’t do feelings,” she says, rolling her eyes. “You want her? Then just go and take her. Twenty silvers says the besotted fool takes you back without even asking what made you change your mind.” He opens his mouth to retort, but she pins him into place with a look, swift and sharp as one of her throwing daggers. “It’s that easy, Fenris. You just want to pretend otherwise.”

Of course Isabela would claim Hawke as she might any other prize, a treasure chest of gold and jewels to be adored and worn for a time, then spent and forgotten—and part of him wishes it _were_ that easy, that he could just pluck her off as a ripe fruit on a branch, and shame warms his face at the thought. He pinches the bridge of his nose and closes his eyes, and Hawke is there, unbidden, printed onto the back of his eyelids like an afterimage, like the pulsing colours one sees for a time after looking too long at the sun: breaths sharp between her parted lips, naked skin layered over the ache of his markings like her favour around his wrist, pleasure and pain and _memories_ welling up under her fingertips, only to dissolve to nothingness once she untangled her body from his.

Even if she were willing, he _cannot_. All he can do is guard the memory of that night and pray it is not taken from him like everything else.

“If it’s not everyone’s favourite angsty Tevinter elf,” someone says behind them, and he knows at once Varric’s warm, roughspun voice, golden as the candlelight skittering on the trim of his tunic. “Ended up coming back after all? Is there some brooding competition in town I’m not aware of?”

Fenris nods his head in acknowledgement. “Not yet, but perhaps I’ll look into starting my own now that I’ve returned.”

“Well, make sure to extend an invitation to the Arishok, then,” Varric laughs. “The oxmen should give you a run for your coin.”

Isabela drains the dregs of her ale and smirks. “Excellent timing, Varric. Come sit with us and buy me a drink?”

“Anything for you, Rivaini … _except_ scrambling to get up on one of those human-sized stools.”

“Spoilsport,” she purrs, moving to sit down with him as he sweeps an arm ceremoniously towards the nearest table. Fenris tosses back the rest of his ale too before joining them. “That’s the best part.”

The dwarf narrows his eyes at him. “Hawke knows you’re back?”

“We have settled matters between us, yes,” he answers, staring at the puddles of wax by the candle stubs on the table. “I—apologise for the trouble. She mentioned that you got in touch with a cousin of yours in Tevinter on my behalf.”

“Good to see you lived to tell the tale, then.” Varric raises three fingers at Norah as she passes by their table, ignoring the waitress’s fond eyeroll with practiced ease. “And don’t mention it. _Really._ Thorold likely enjoyed the break from the usual Ambassadoria shenanigans and Mae pulls political strings for favours the way normal people breathe.” He blows out a deep breath, a crag forming between his brows as he swings his eyes from Fenris to Isabela and back. “Look, elf, I know I don’t have a leg to stand on when it comes to”—he gestures vaguely at his chest—“matters of the heart, and I’m sure that one day, we’ll all look back on this and laugh.”

“But?” Fenris supplies for him, brows lowered. The muscles in his shoulders tighten before he forces them to relax; this is nothing he did not expect when he made his decision to return.

“But,” Varric repeats with a nod, draining the last of the amber-gold liquid in his glass, “Hawke is my best friend, and the whole pensive brooding thing? Doesn’t suit her nearly so much as it suits you.”

Fenris barely has time to open his mouth before the dwarf is speaking again, the words a little closer together than his normal storyteller tone. “I’m gonna say my piece and then be done with it, since there’s nothing I can say that isn’t just filler for whatever went down between you two. But there was something missing when you were gone, some part of Hawke that went dark and quiet, and wasn’t …” He trails off, frowning at the empty glass in his hand. “She wasn’t really _Hawke_.”

Fenris breathes out, taking the words like a physical blow. Hadn’t he dreaded that? In all the times his mind had sought out the woman who set his blood on fire, hadn’t he feared that he’d not just sliced her open but had wounded something deeper inside, some inner core of her that he hadn’t permission to touch?

He’s thankful for the laugh Isabela lets out, however wry. “You men should hear yourselves, squabbling about how best spare her feelings. Hawke’s a big girl, not some piece of glasswork to be kept in gauze and taken out on special occasions. She could use a bit of wear and tear, anyway,” she adds with a shrug. “Toughen that bleeding heart up a bit.”

“You _wound_ me, Rivaini,” Varric defends himself, splaying one hand over his heart. “Can’t just let him completely off the hook, though, can I?”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong, I’m not at all complaining about the brooding.” Isabela unsheathes a dagger to pick at her nails again. “But Fenris has been telling _me_ not to take advantage of her, and _you’re_ working your way towards telling _him_ to watch himself around her,” she continues, emphasising her words with the point of her blade, “all the while forgetting that you’re talking about an apostate _and_ a woman who’s been living in this shithole of a city for years now. If she throws herself at you again”—Fenris feels the tips of his ears burn before her blade’s accusatory end—“that’s on her and she knows it. She can handle herself. You both wouldn’t be so smitten with her if that wasn’t the case, anyway.”

Her aim is true, as always. “No one here is _smitten_ ,” Fenris huffs, scrambling for something to refute.

Varric laughs under his breath, turning back to him. “Forget it, elf. Rivaini’s got us good. Alright, then let me just say this: if Hawke and you are good? I’m good.” He graces the two of them with his full, familiar smirk. “No promises on keeping the Coterie off your back, though. And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you’ve returned. You still owe me fifty silvers, remember?”

Fenris smirks back at him. “Not if I win the coin back from you, dwarf.”

Isabela already has a deck of cards in her hand, and Norah returns with their ale and a platter of cheese soon afterwards. As silver and cards change hands, and patrons trickle in, things settle back into their rightful place with each shiver of the torchlight in the swinging door. “We’re just being easy on you,” grouses Varric when Fenris wins his fifty silvers back on the first round (not that it matters because Isabela will sweep up the night’s winnings, anyway), and between the rush of victory and the pleasant warmth of the ale in his belly, he feels oddly … content.

A woman starts picking at the strings of a lute and launches into _The Ballad of Nuggins_ , her throaty voice smooth as velvet. A table of Fereldan refugees clamours for _Andraste’s Mabari_ before long, and Fenris catches himself tapping the rhythm with one foot. He knows the lyrics by heart despite himself, after sitting through so many of Hawke’s drunken renditions. If she were here, she’d be the first to burst into song, pulling him to his feet into that frantic hopping that southerners call dance—

Someone staggers to their table and clutches the lip, toppling the towers of coin raised around the pile of cards.

“Oh, don’t you dare puke on my silver,” Isabela says when the man starts heaving for breath. “Shoo.”

“Gamlen?” Varric asks around a startled laugh. Even then it takes Fenris a moment to recognise Hawke’s uncle under the crimson colour of his face and the sweat pouring down his brow. “Everything alright?”

All that comes out when Gamlen opens his mouth is a wheeze. Varric hands him his mug of ale, but the first swallow sends him coughing until he’s nearly gagging from the effort, and Isabela has to administer him a few hearty slaps on the back before he stops choking long enough to drain the mug in one swig.

“Leandra,” he gasps at last, “was taken.”

A shiver runs down Fenris’s spine like a fingernail. Varric lowers his hand as he blinks up at Gamlen, the fanned-out cards now in full view. “What do you mean, _taken_? Where?”

He shakes his head, still gasping for air. “The killer,” he rasps before another coughing fit rattles him. “Amabel went to Darktown—” he continues, and Fenris reaches for his greatsword when he realises he means _Hawke_ , “said someone might help—”

His cards slide across the table as Varric rushes to get his crossbow, and Gamlen collapses into the now-vacant chair while Isabela sweeps the coin into her boots and belt. The three of them then rush out of the Hanged Man to the old city slums, where stairs of crumbling stone disappear into the disused passages that connect Lowtown to the undercity.

It seems an impossibly long run, pushing past beggars and streetwalkers and drunks tottering in the streets, but soon Darktown’s telltale stench of chokedamp and sewage seizes Fenris by the throat, even through the fire in his lungs.

“ _Tomwise!_ ” Varric exclaims, and the poison maker starts at the sound of his name, nearly dropping the full contents of a vial into the fuming mixture before him. “Seen Hawke?”

“Well, hello to you too,” he snaps back, but Fenris cuts a glare at him and Tomwise forgoes pleasantries. “Sure did. Came running down here like a bat out of the Void, then went ‘round that corner,” he answers, pointing to the old mining tunnels. “Barely paid me any mind, like—yeah, kind of—exactly like that, actually,” he ends in a shout as they run off.

For once Fenris found himself hoping Hawke enlisted Anders’s help, but they head away from the mage’s clinic and deeper into the bowels of Kirkwall instead. Figures huddle around fires, muttering to themselves and rocking back and forth, while the ancient slave frescoes sway in the flickering light, silhouetted under decades of soot and grime. The tunnel reeks of smoke and damp, but they squeeze past the broken-down, rusted carts and collapsed rafters, the ruts guiding their path through the dark. “Maker’s _balls_ ,” Isabela chokes out when they edge closer to whatever is giving off the stench of rot that clogs the end of the tunnel, and Fenris lets the drone of flies guide him away from its source.

When at last the tunnel opens up into light again, even the smell of sewage is a relief, though nowhere near as much as the sight of Hawke: unharmed, at least, her hound with her, and in heated conversation with an elegantly dressed man that Fenris has seen wandering the Hightown market stalls once or twice.

Isabela clicks her tongue. “Gascard DuPuis? Oh, Hawke.”

“Well, _shit_. Man’s even shadier than I am.”

Gascard looks even more out of place among the collapsed scaffolds than Hawke does, with his damask doublet and perfectly coiffed hair. The knife in his hand is no less ornate: the hilt is inlaid with precious metals, and torchlight twists down the patterned blade when he holds it towards her and makes for her wrist.

Darktown blurs past Fenris as his markings come to life. The pommel of his sword strikes Gascard in the chest with a thud and sends him sprawling to the ground, the knife clattering against the stone.

“Fen?” Hawke gasps, jolting back. Maker’s Bark lowers his hackles and wags his stump of a tail in greeting.

At their feet, Gascard gasps for air, his handsome face purpling. “Who—how did you—?”

Fenris pins him back down with his foot when he attempts to push himself up, still wheezing. “Shut up,” he says, unsheathing his sword to press the point to the hollow of his throat. Then he twists his neck to look at Hawke from above his shoulder. “Has he hurt you?”

Shame scuds through her eyes. “No, he … he says he can help me find Mother,” she answers, clutching her staff like it was the only thing keeping her from crumbling to the ground. She’s wearing those well-worn calf-leather boots, still caked with mud from the Fereldan countryside, but not much else besides a muslin shift, some useless, coquettish thing with fabric rosebuds pinned around the collar. Hardly appropriate gear for Darktown: the fabric is already streaked with grime, her arms are crisscrossed with scratches, and her knees, skinned and smeared with dirt.

An easy prey for Gascard, whatever his ends. Fenris turns back to glower at him. “Blood magic? _That’s_ your plan?”

The mage opens his hands on either side of his head. “Peace, friend,” he says in his accented Common. “It’s a simple ritual. Blood ties are powerful; it will take us right to her mother. I just need a little bit of her blood.”

Varric snorts. “That’s reassuring.”

Fenris has to resist the urge to run his blade clean through Gascard’s throat. “Even one drop of blood is too much,” he says, turning back to Hawke. “The temptation is too strong. You’ve _seen_ what becomes of it.”

She sighs, still unwilling to meet his gaze. “I won’t be the one casting the spell, though,” she says, by all appearances attempting to convince herself as much as him.

Isabela shrugs. “She’s right. He tries anything funny, we kill him and steal his stuff. I call dibs on the knife,” she adds as she picks it up, then wipes the blade with the indigo-dyed sash tied around her hips. “And you’d look handsome in that doublet, Fenris.”

He ignores her. “Do _not_ be taken in, Hawke.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” she says in a strained whisper.

Everyone is looking at him now, the only thing standing between her and whatever foul ritual Gascard wants to inflict upon her. It always starts this way, with some reasonable excuse, some good cause to turn to blood magic, to take the first step towards the cliff, and he hates him for luring her closer to the edge. How long before the stain of magic seeps deeper into her soul and consumes her whole, then?

“If you have a better idea, elf, we’re all ears,” Varric says after a time.

Fenris looks at Hawke, this brightly burning woman now reduced to a paper doll dropped in water, and he cannot _believe_ he’s abiding this, but he will never be able to live with himself if they cannot find Leandra in time because of him.

“ _Venhedis_ ,” he relents, lifting his foot off Gascard’s chest and stepping back. “Do what you must, mage.”

Gascard makes a show of feeling his neck and examining his fingers for blood—preposterous for a blood mage—then dusts off his clothes before pulling himself to his feet. He stretches a hand out towards Isabela and clears his throat.

“Crud,” she mutters, relinquishing the knife.

Hawke takes a breath, then splays one hand out in front of her. Gascard clutches her wrist and draws the blade across her palm with practiced ease, and Fenris _better_ have imagined the upwards quirk of the mage’s lips at the whimper that escapes her mouth. The scarlet line swells across her palm until thick wreaths of blood rise from the wound, twisting and curling in the air as Gascard starts weaving them together like ribbons, lips moving in quiet incantation.

His gut churns. For one unending moment he is back in Tevinter, watching yet another bloodletting. It never bothered him, then—quite the opposite, in fact: every death only reaffirmed his worth in his master’s eyes, while he looked down upon the undeserving slaves who ended up on the bleeding table with their lifeblood streaming in crimson runnels down the grooves. But now that he knows how _wrong_ it all was, he has to battle against every last shred of his being screaming at him to kill Gascard where he stands while the red haze thickens over the mage’s eyes.

The spell starts crackling along Hawke’s hand in scarlet scales, and his grip only tightens around her wrist when she recoils from him. Maker’s Bark starts growling; Varric arms his crossbow, but Gascard doesn’t even notice the bolt trained on him. Fenris clutches the hilt of his greatsword and starts counting backwards from ten.

The crimson tendrils writhe in mid-air, twisting together like strands into a knot. As he watches them coalesce into a thick bubble, he somehow thinks of the threads clumped together on the underside of the Amell crest Hawke embroidered on her favour.

_… four … three … two …_

He lifts his sword, aims the point at Gascard—and the spell comes to an end, the bubble breaking apart to spray the front of Hawke’s shift with darkly gleaming streaks.

She doubles over, gagging. Isabela catches her as she staggers on her feet. “You did great, kitten,” she says, then tucks the hair plastered on Hawke’s temples back behind her ears. “Did you see where she is?”

Hawke nods once. “At the foundry,” she gasps, clutching her staff for support. “Let’s go.”

They make their way back through the abandoned mineshafts of the undercity, Gascard on their heels. Hawke attempts a healing spell on her palm as she runs, but the magic keeps slipping off the edges of the wound like water off oilcloth. She gives up before long, ignoring the blood that spirals down her arm to drip onto the rust-coloured stone at her feet.

Anything is an improvement after Darktown’s stink of chokedamp and disease, even the smoke and stifling heat of the foundry, but the Veil is even thinner here, and Fenris’s markings bite deeper into his body as the lyrium rouses under the pull of the Fade. As they make their way around the enormous vats of bubbling ore, he can see years upon years of death and suffering imprinted upon the Fade: thousands of slaves before him have been worked to death here by the magisters of yore, felled by exhaustion or the merciless burn of molten metal, and now every lash, every scream, every death is carved into the stone slabs of the very foundations.

That dark forces and deranged minds should be drawn to this place is no surprise.

No point bringing it up, however, not when the discovery of Leandra’s locket in the soot has Hawke on the verge of shaking apart. Fenris relegates the pain to some far-off corner of his mind and follows down the trap door that Varric found concealed on the floor. And there, deep under the rumble of the foundry, they find a room: hardly ideal living quarters, to be sure, yet not the destitute squalor of the city slums, either. Shelves groan under piles of tomes and reams of paper, and various implements are lined up in neat rows on the desk. Varric nudges a shield balanced against the straw mattress in the far corner, crested with the twin birds of the Amell house. Gascard riffles through an open book on the table. “Necromancy,” Isabela says, shuffling the sheets of vellum scattered about the floor with the toe of her boot. “And I thought I was naughty.”

Hawke stands in the middle of it, oblivious even to her hound as he licks the blood dripping down her hand with soft whines. Instead she stares at the framed portrait slanted against the wall, flanked by still-burning candles and a vase of white lilies. The flowers bloom in defiance of the underground gloom, the heady balsam of their fragrance corrupted by the foundry fumes and the cloying stench of rot.

The lilies. Fenris dreamed about the same flowers on Revka’s windowsill, white as the wave-crests of the Waking Sea where she jumped to her death. Is the woman on the portrait the same whose last moments he saw in his dreams, then? And Solona, and the Warden Alistair—was it all real, too?

 _Madness_ , he thinks. Nothing more than the needle-like twinge of his markings addling his thoughts.

“She looks like Mother, doesn’t she?” Hawke says in a choked whisper when Fenris walks up to her, rummaging through his belt for strips of linen. The woman on the painting does look like Leandra, and even a little like Hawke herself, with those blue Amell eyes and fine features she inherited from her mother. “And those flowers … That was _him_.”

He bandages her wounded hand, features schooled to impassivity. Something passes behind the fear in her eyes when she looks at him, but it does not find its way to the surface. “We should move on,” he says, tying the last knot. She blinks, as if snapping out of a trance, and nods.

The deeper they head underground, the deeper his markings slice into his skin. Here, the suffering and anguish are recent things, slithering along the soot-stained rafters and pulsing at his feet with the living memory of bodies being dragged along the floor. Their last moments cling to the lyrium carved into his skin, clamouring to be relived, and as he winds through the passageways of the undercity, Fenris senses the killer before he even sees him: all the blood spilled by his hand is clotted around him in the enduring memory of the Fade.

And yet it’s hope that keeps Hawke running through the miasma of festering flesh, the lines of her body taut with determination. Whatever horror awaits them down here, Fenris will have to see her through it.

When at last she lays eyes on the killer, she pounds through the heaps of refuse towards him, the torn shreds of the Veil flapping in her wake. The very sight of him feels as though Fenris just ran his hand over dead flesh: cold, and clammy, the rot about to give way under his fingers. His eyes are as lifeless as the bodies surrounding him, sat on chairs or lain on cots and covered in filthy, bloodstained sheets.

“I was wondering when you’d show up,” he welcomes them, his voice creaking like a rusty-hinged door. “Ah, and you even brought Gascard along.”

“Quentin,” Gascard says in answer, and nobody but Hawke is surprised when it turns out that he was using her all along to track down his erstwhile mentor. One of Varric’s bolts shuts him up mid-sentence, sprouting from his throat. _Good_ , Fenris thinks, watching him slump prone to the ground as he chokes on his own blood. He only regrets not getting to kill him himself.

“ _Where_ is my mother?” Hawke demands. Her good hand grips her staff; the other she keeps curled against her chest, a crimson stain already spreading on the linen bandages.

Quentin smiles at her as he might a particularly obtuse child. “Your mother was chosen because she was special, and now she is part of something greater,” he answers as he caresses the cheek of the corpse seated in the nearby armchair. “I have done the impossible. I have touched the face of the Maker and _lived_.”

Her knuckles turn white around the ironbark grip of her staff. “I just want her back,” she chokes out.

Why she insists on trying to reason with him is beyond Fenris. Of this he has no doubt: Quentin’s mind is as broken as Revka’s body on the crags of the Wounded Coast, though the thought offers little comfort when men like Danarius have all their wits about them.

Quentin shakes his head, as though disappointed by the banality of her plea. “Do you know what the strongest force in the universe is?” Hawke does not bother to venture an answer, her lips set to a hard line as she stares back at him. “ _Love,_ ” he finishes, and for all the times Fenris has heard the word twisted until all meaning was wrung out of it, never has it revulsed him more than it does now.

Varric scoffs. Isabela leans towards Fenris. “Told you love messes up everything,” she whispers.

He barely hears her. His markings feel like liquid fire as the Fade roils with the black undercurrents of blood magic, and he closes the distance between him and Hawke without thinking, limbs stiff with pain. “Hawke,” he says, grabbing her arm to pull her back; suddenly the memory of her mother’s death is stitched all over the Veil like sutures into dead skin, and no one should have to see this, least of all _her_.

But Hawke does not budge. Her eyes are trained on Quentin as he raises his arms overhead, the lines of his face etched deep as scars in the torchlight.

An exalted smile splits his face open—an obscene sight on the same mouth that has done nothing but desecrate the woman he claims to love and the very notion thereof. “I’ve searched far and wide to find you again, beloved, and no force on this earth will part us,” he exclaims, and years later, when Fenris has long left Kirkwall behind him, more than Quentin’s beatific smile, more than the thing lumbering towards them wearing a filthy wedding dress and Leandra’s face, it’s Hawke’s eyes that he will remember: as clear and blue as the waters of Lake Calenhad by Solona’s quiet Circle tower, so limpid he could see straight to the bottom and watch as her heart snapped in half.

Magic rolls over the room, thick and foul as congealed blood, and the already threadbare Veil tears as demons and shades claw their way through. The heap that Fenris dismissed as refuse shudders to life. _Corpses_ , he realises as they start crawling through the grime and jerk to their feet. Empty eye sockets stare at them, unseeing; clumps of hair and patches of leathery skin slough off to expose skulls, and rotted teeth protrude from peeled-back lips.

Steel sighs against leather as Isabela unsheathes her blades before lunging for the nearest shade. Varric arms his crossbow, and one of the corpses stumbles back with a bolt sunk through its chest. At least Fenris has the satisfaction of killing Gascard himself this time, slicing him in two with one swift arc of his greatsword.

At the far end of the room, Quentin is casting another spell, shielding himself with a thick barrier of magic. He _dares_ , the coward. After all that he’s done to these women, he dares summon demons to do his fighting for him while he cowers behind his magic. Fenris attempts to cleave a path to him through the shades and skeletons, ichor and old blood gushing out with each swing of his blade, but each time he fells one, another takes its place. One of Quentin’s unfortunate experiments hurls itself at him with a hiss, ribcage stretched open in front of it like the leaves of a flytrap in the jungle of Seheron. Its bony fingers claw at the markings on his arm, and the pain is such that his vision bleeds even as he rams the creature with the pommel of his greatsword. Still it clings to his armour, splintered teeth edging closer to his neck.

A bolt sinks into its skull; the skeleton slams to the ground, and a downwards thrust of his blade is then enough to snap its spine in two.

Another corpse staggers towards Isabela, head lolling back and forth atop the slapdash sutures on its neck. It clutches her arm mid-swipe, allowing a shade to claw into the meat of her upper leg. Fenris rushes to her side, dispatching the shade with a swing of his sword. “Flesh wound,” Isabela gasps, pulling her dagger out of the corpse’s skull while the shade dissipates into a black mist. “I’ll be fine.”

Fenris melts back into the battle. It’s quiet, somehow, without Isabela’s taunts, Varric’s jokes, Hawke’s laughter and the crackle of her fire and—

 _Hawke_.

“Elf!” Varric shouts.

Fenris whirls around, eyes frantically searching for her amidst the fiends and walking corpses. He spots her standing in the middle of the fray, her bandaged hand clasped to her mouth. Her hound is keeping the dead off her, jaws snapping at limbs and tearing them off, but her eyes are blind to everything but the sight of her mother’s mutilated body—no, not _hers_ —swaying on its feet.

He’s across the room in half a heartbeat. He strikes down a corpse trudging towards her, another on the downswing, then sinks his greatsword hilt-deep into the squirming mass of a shade. Its flesh dissolves around the steel as it melts back into the Fade, swaths of skin blown off like ash in a gust of wind.

“Hawke,” Fenris says, cupping her cheek with one hand so that she will look at him. Her gaze sweeps the room before meeting his, hazy as a dream. She drops her wounded hand back to her side, blood staining her parted mouth crimson. “You must fight,” he says, then tilts his forehead against hers when her eyes stray again to the demons all about them. “ _Please._ ”

A shade lets out its guttural grunt behind him, and as it draws closer, the telltale coldness that follows them everywhere starts dripping down his spine. “ _Kaffas,_ ” he mutters, gripping the handle of his sword.

Her hand closes around his. When he looks at her again her gaze is lucid: it glares hard and bright as steel in sunlight, and Fenris would look away were it not for the rivulets of blood streaming down her arm as she raises her staff overhead. _This is it,_ he thinks. _This is her undoing_.

But Hawke does not fall—not even here, surrounded by the horrors Quentin has wrought—and Fenris sheds whatever part of him still doubted her and casts it at her feet then, forgotten. “Stay close,” she says as the magic under her skin comes alive against his, lifting the deep-seated ache of his markings. Light gathers at the end of her staff, blinding as her eyes underneath; magic settles around them until all he can see is the blue of her eyes burning through. He says her name, but it is lost in the inches between them, curling into smoke in the soundless heat: the snarls of the dead, the thrum of the whipcord on Varric’s crossbow, the hack of Isabela’s blades against bones—all else burns in the searing silence, save for his own blood beating against his eardrums and the sharp inhale Hawke takes between their mouths.

The end of her staff strikes the ground, and the spell breaks loose. The light roars like wildfire as it whooshes outwards and tears through the fiends around them, snapping spines back, wrenching limbs apart and scattering bones in great gouts of flames.

Fenris reels on his feet, briefly meeting Varric’s and Isabela’s stupefied gazes as he takes in the wide circle of ash and charred dirt around them. Face set in a white mask of rage, Hawke stands in the center, her breath shuddering between her teeth. Magic crackles in furious forks around the end of her staff, and she thrusts it forward, casting forth a spear of lightning that pierces a demon clean through before striking Quentin’s barrier. It falters, and the man scrambles to pour more magic into it.

But Hawke has carved a path to him, and Fenris is free to pull him out of his hiding hole while Varric and Isabela strike down what few demons and corpses are left standing. He clenches his teeth through the pain igniting his markings as he calls upon them to step through the weakened glow of the barrier. The lyrium slices like knives into his skin while the spell fights to repel him, much like walking against the gale on a plain.

And then at last— _at last_ —the magic gives way, shattering around him like glass. He stumbles all at once to the other side with a groan of pain and effort and _relief_ as he shoves Quentin against the wall. Surprise flits across his pale eyes—surprise, not fear, for what do dead men have to fear? And save for the wilted thing pulsing in Fenris’s fist, Quentin himself is long dead, the last spark of humanity within him extinguished long ago in the roar of the Waking Sea.

“Kill me,” Quentin starts, his gaze flicking to Leandra, “and she dies too.”

His pulse is slow even as it drums the beat to its own dirge, and his heart squelches under his grasp as Fenris tightens his hold around it. Around them the barrier weakens. “A kinder fate than this farce, and a kinder fate than you deserve.”

“Death by your righteous hand?” He grins, teeth stained red. “Such fury in your eyes, and yet you too take the finality of death for granted. Go on, then. Kill, and never rise above the dumb acceptance of things as they appear to be,” he says, the words thick and wet as the gobs of blood that roll down his chin. “But know this: I have made life out of death, and if you had ever loved as I have, you too would storm the Fade itself to bring back the woman you love. When you have loved as I have, no sacrifice is too great to be lain at her altar.”

“ _Enough,_ ” Fenris retorts, the brushed-steel fingers of his gauntlet poking through the pulsating mass in his hand. “You defile the thought.”

The heart gives one last pulse against his palm before he rips it out of his chest. Quentin’s last words end in a gurgle as he crumbles before him. In death, he almost looks like the once-handsome man Revka loved before her loss tainted his heart—yet for all the death it wrought, it is nothing more than a lump small enough to sit in his hand, infuriatingly fragile: Fenris could crush it in his fist a thousand times over and it would never be _enough._

Hawke drops her staff. Leandra crumbles into her arms; that wretched wedding veil comes loose in her fall, and the tiara of filigreed silver and pearls makes a slow, wobbling circle in the grime before coming to a stop. Hawke summons one last smile for her mother, a crescent of moonlight and cheer that shines too bright, too numinous to be profaned by everything unholy around it, that makes Fenris wonder whether every smile until now was not just magic crafted out of her will like a spell out of the Fade.

He tosses his heart back at Quentin. It lands at his feet with a squelch and a splatter while blood runs hot between his fingers, red as the favour around his wrist.

* * *

A milky, colourless light blankets Lowtown by the time they come out of the abandoned mineshafts after parting ways with Isabela, who hobbled to Anders’s clinic instead. The spikes hedging the stairs and roofs thrust through the morning mists; the district is deserted at this hour, save for a drunk or two passed out in the refuse, and the only sounds are the caw of ravens fighting over scraps of food and the creak of the Hanged Man’s sign swinging over the entrance.

The stillness of dawn is smothering, too quiet for the horrors under their feet. Her hound on her heels, Hawke drags herself up the long climb to Hightown, eyes empty as glass, mouth pinched to a thin line. Fenris does not know how to reach the woman underneath. Perhaps he should leave her to the safe retreat of her own mind, the fleeting pretense that this is a morning like any other, so he follows her as he would on any other day, staring at the long lines of dried-up blood twisting down her arm.

“By the Maker, Hawke,” Aveline exclaims when they stumble through the foyer of her estate, Donnic after her. Two other guards are there, and Bodahn, and Orana—too much of a crowd, too many eyes on Hawke’s bruised and battered heart, and Fenris finds himself moving to block her from their sight. “Did you find her?”

“We, uh … we were too late,” Varric answers, rubbing the grooves between his eyebrows.

Donnic runs one hand over his face and mutters, “Maker,” while heat rushes to Aveline’s face, mottling her cheeks red, but she composes herself and blinks the tears away. “Where?” she asks through the clench of her jaw.

“I’ll explain.” Varric ushers the guards out of the foyer and into the study, leaving Fenris with Hawke and her household staff. “Dreadful,” Bodahn keeps repeating, dabbing at his reddened eyes, “how utterly dreadful,” while little Orana—who might have winked out of existence altogether had she made herself any smaller when Fenris was last there—wipes the tears off her face, squares her shoulders, and curtseys. “Your bath is drawn, Mistress,” she says, her voice admirably level.

Hawke does not remind her to call her by her name. Instead she stares uncomprehendingly at Orana’s upturned palms, and Fenris has to give her staff a gentle tug before she unclasps her hands from around the grip. She turns to him as though unseeing, her gaze lost somewhere in the miles and miles of space between them; then it turns sharp enough to pierce through him, and Fenris looks over his shoulder to see the white lilies on the windowsill behind him—

The vase is swept across the room, smashing against the far wall with a thundering crash, and the familiar tingle of magic skitters and fades out along the channels of his markings. Aveline rushes into the foyer clutching the sword at her hip, but Hawke is already halfway to her bedchamber with only the faintest whiff of a looming thunderstorm in her wake. It fades into the cloying fragrance of the lilies, while water drips down the wall onto the shards of porcelain and blossoms scattered on the floor tiles.

Fenris follows her without thinking. The flames of the hearth and sconces stretch high in the empty bedchamber, and he hovers in the doorway, watching as Hawke drops to her knees by the copper bathtub in the ensuite. She lets herself fall against the lip, her midsection striking the edge, and splays her hands on the bottom to submerge her arms, mindless of the water sloshing over the brim. Then she heaves a sob that sends a ripple across the clean, sweet-smelling surface of the water, the ends of her hair floating around her head like a black halo, and his markings stir awake again as she starts pouring half-cast spells into the water to smother them.

Even through the plumes of smoke bubbling out he sees the bright glow of white flames lighting up the water from within. Soon the steam rising in swirls from the surface is enough to fog the mirrors in the room, a tangible weight resting heavy upon them.

“Hawke,” Fenris says, and the water is almost scalding when he attempts to pull her out, “you will hurt yourself.”

She whirls around to face him, falling back against the tub with a splash of water and one last sizzling arc of fire. “And what do you care if I do?” she snarls at him.

His face flames with shame at that. “I would not see you hurt more than you are already,” he tries.

Her blue eyes burn bright as Fade wisps, the sharp tang of blood that clings to her cutting into the swirls of rose-scented steam. The heat of the bathwater left red splotches on the skin of her bare arms; her dress clings to her body, bloodied and soaked, and strands of wet hair stick to her cheeks like black scars. Fenris has seen her with worse wounds, starved and left for dead in the Deep Roads with nary a speck of light left in her eyes, and he will carry to his grave her face as she watched him leave—and yet it all amounts to so little now.

“Then why did you leave?” she asks, defiant, the words shuddering between her teeth, and he knows she doesn’t only mean the city.

His gaze drops to the puddles on the floor, pink with the diluted blood that runs down his breastplate. Quentin’s blood, he thinks, and Gascard’s and _Hawke’s_ , and how is he even supposed to mend wounds when he was made to cause them in the first place? How could he stay when he is broken, sundered, tempered steel and hard edges, and the least she deserves is someone whole, someone made of flesh and blood? And the worst is that perhaps he was like that once, before everything soft was carved out of him so that all that is left is bone-dry and sharp, and he cannot look at her without seeing what he might have once been, and what he wishes he were now, and what he lost in-between.

But he cannot tell her. He cannot tell her that he is too craven to love her the way she deserves to be, that he is too scared to have her because then he could lose her. He had it all for an instant: his past, his memories, everything he lost and more, Hawke in his arms with her fingers in his hair and his name on her lips, and then he lost it all and felt all the emptier for it, and he cannot bear the thought of losing her too.

He _wants_ to tell her that, but words fail him. The silence stretches.

Her mouth twists into a bitter smile. “Maybe you’re the lucky one after all, not remembering who you left behind,” she says, and the words sink into his stomach like a blade. “No one to fail, no one to disappoint or lose. No one to break your heart or—get dismembered and stitched back together by a madman.” She gasps for air like she’d been holding her breath, then smoothes her features back into place and gestures to the favour at his wrist. “You don’t have to keep wearing that, you know.”

 _Coming here was a mistake_ , Fenris admonishes himself. He cannot presume to understand: he knows not love, or its incommensurable loss, only years spent adrift, a bit of flotsam on the open sea—but Hawke has seen through to the darkest parts of him and remained, staid as the cobalt ribbon of land in the distance, and unless she sends him away herself he will not turn tail when grief speaks in her voice.

He wets his lips. “I’m here now, Hawke, and I would stay with you, if you will allow it.”

Her eyes meet his at that, and even through her clumped lashes something softens inside her gaze; before long it gives way and caves inward, and he catches her when she falls against him, fingers fumbling for purchase on the leather straps of his armour. It matters not how bent and broken he is when all he has to do is hold her: his arms close around her just as well as anyone else’s, and she doesn’t even notice how she snags on his embrace as she weeps, her lips quivering against his neck.

They stay like this for a long time, tangled up in the puddles of water turning cold on the floor, in a clumsy embrace which—between the burn of his brands and the bruises on her body—hurts as much as it heals.

* * *

Viscount Perrin Threnhold jerks back, iron circlet askew his balding head, when the bird whooshes past him and soars overhead with a flap of its fiery wings. Sparks swirl in its wake as it circles the room, lighting up turn by turn the nobles seated around the hall: Florianne de Chalons wide-eyed under her half-mask, the Comtesse de Launcet muffling a shriek behind one hand, Lord Harimann and the attendant pouring his wine both staring agape, oblivious to the overbrimming cup. Even the Templars gasp under their helmets, their plate armour warmed to bronze in the glowing fire of the bird.

Heat washes over Leandra’s face when it flaps its wings in front of her—once, then twice. Laughter bubbles out of her throat despite herself when she finds herself clutching her brother’s arm while he stares up at the beast, mouth hanging open.

The bird then spreads its wings, feather-flames flickering two arm-spans wide, and swoops through the hall again to dive back into the candle from which it was summoned, burning itself out in a spray of dying sparks.

Until her eyes adjust to the dim lighting again, all that Leandra sees is the burning end of the wick lighting up the proud, almost arrogant grin on the young mage’s face as he stands in the middle of the ballroom. Then he winks at her—a trick of the light, she tells herself—sweeps a dramatic bow, chamberstick in hand, and the room lets out its collective breath before bursting into applause and cheer.

The flash of heat that rises to Leandra’s cheeks is twice that of the bird.

“What a marvelous, marvelous performance it was,” she says, the words pouring out of her of their own accord when at last he joins her on one of the balconies ringing the ballroom. The wine left her feeling giddy and daring, and feigning a malaise, she snuck out of her parents’ notice after entreating Gamlen to send the mage after her. Heart aflutter she waited while the music of the banquet streamed muted through the drapes, and by the time he swept them open the lightheadedness wasn’t much of a pretense anymore.

They will talk, nothing more. For one balmy evening she will indulge this ill-advised whim of hers, and by the time she plucks the chords to _The Red-Breasted Robin_ during her lute lesson on the morrow, she will have forgotten all about the handsome Circle mage she met at the Threnhold estate.

Or … they _might_ talk, if she ever quiets down long enough.

“—what mastery of magic,” Leandra hears herself babble, not herself at all, “what self-restraint one must possess to—to create something so fantastical out of _thin air_.”

He graces her with another grin, as disarmingly charming as the first. “I doubt the Templars would let me out of the Gallows again anytime soon if I set someone’s wig alight.”

The jest takes her by surprise. Leandra only has time to press a hand to her mouth before breaking into laughter. “Oh, such a shame. Maker knows some of them would deserve it.”

His laughter is as warm as the blossom that unfurls in her belly. “Then perhaps next time you can tell me at whose wig I should misaim my fire, my lady.” He straightens to his full height, nearly a head taller than she. “Malcolm Hawke,” he introduces himself, then curls his fingers around hers and inclines himself to kiss the air above her knuckles, close enough she can feel the warmth of his breath on her skin.

His eyes meet hers, amber gold in the torches of the balcony. “Leandra Amell,” she answers when she remembers her own name, bobbing her head in a small nod. “A pleasure to meet you, Serah Hawke.” At that she giggles, much despite herself. “Oh, I get it now,” she starts as he blinks in confusion. “The fiery bird? It was a hawk, wasn’t it?”

He smirks, though he runs a nervous hand through the shock of black hair that he will one day give his children. “Guilty as charged. I hope you can forgive this bit of vanity.”

“There is nothing to forgive,” she replies, leaning against the banister of the balcony. A soft breeze blows around them, green with the scent of the vines wreathing the marble columns of the estate. Before her the city sprawls, torchlit streets winding down to the great heave of the Waking Sea, where the lights of a ship or two glow in the offing. “How wonderful it must be to have the power to will things into being, to shape reality according to one’s wishes and whims …”

“Spoken like someone who wishes she could change a great many things,” he says before composing himself again, as though he had caught himself talking aloud without meaning to. “I apologise, my lady. That was too forward of me.”

Something twists inside her chest. Far in the distance, the Gallows are nigh invisible, a fortress etched a shade darker over the black of the sea. Leandra cannot presume to understand the plight of a mage in the Circle—and that the Templars are sworn to protect her from people like him seems so _ludicrous_ —but she’s been betrothed since the age of eleven to a boy she didn’t choose, much less _likes_ , and she can’t begrudge Malcolm his fire hawks when he is even more of a caged bird than she is.

“It would be remiss of me not to say that it is,” she replies, then shushes the voice admonishing her for her impropriety, and smiles at him. “Not that I mind it.”

 _Talk_ , she reminds herself as he leans against the banister next to her. _Nothing more_.

How easy it is, though, to let the hours melt into one another, until the barest peek of dawn rises in the moons’ stead, to let Malcolm steal the first kiss from her lips before he returns to the Gallows; how easy it is to slip under and fall in love, to let one night turn into a lifetime, to forsake all else and cross half the world …

Sunlight is splashing the floor at the hem of Hawke’s drawn curtains when Fenris wakes. The pillow they share is wet with her tears, and smells of her freshly-washed hair and the cypress chest where the ill-fitting change of clothes he had to borrow from her brother was stored. Her hand, dressed anew, rests curled by her head, the chain of her mother’s locket glinting between her fingers. The hulking mass of her hound is curled up against her legs, his head resting on her knees.

Fenris meant to take his leave once she fell asleep, but even despite the honeyed infusion of spindleweed, she lay wide awake for what felt like hours after they scrubbed each other clean of the crusted blood and ichor. _Not like we haven’t both seen everything there is to see, anyway,_ Hawke said, almost one of her usual japes but for the flatness of her voice, so he unlaced the bloodied ruin of her dress and let her help his breastplate off, and together they climbed into the bathtub and later, into bed.

An odd thing, to touch her body and smell its warm scent again, to see it for what it is without the intoxicating haze of desire clouding his senses: a fragile thing of pale flesh and paler scars bound around all that remains of Leandra Amell and Malcolm Hawke.

Fenris is not to be envied. What is he if not his scars, a vessel worth less than the lyrium carved into it? Whose were the memories meant to fill him? Whose memory has he condemned to oblivion by not remembering?

He tries to conjure the face of this supposed sister of his, but her features keep shifting, borrowed from women on the street like—

He rubs the burn out of his eyes, forcing the thought away. Next to him, Hawke’s eyelids shiver in her sleep.

He has no right. Let Malcolm Hawke’s last surviving daughter see him in her dreams, know that her parents wed in secret in a splash of stained-glass colours, with a certain Ser Maurevar as their witness. Let her bury the memory of that wretched wedding gown with the dress of cream chiffon that sat tight across the slight swell of Leandra’s stomach, her hair of spun gold gathered under her lady mother’s Antivan lace veil, borrowed surreptitiously for the occasion. Let Hawke know that her father forgot his vows and instead swore to protect his own until he breathed his last, and on the day their daughter was born, gave Leandra that locket that now rests against her collarbone: a songbird on a flowering branch carved out of shell, and on the inside, penned in elegant longhand:

 _You make it all worth it_.

_MH_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I _love_ the theory that Revka Amell was Quentin’s wife; I hadn’t planned on doing more than hinting at it initially, but I wanted to give Fenris’s dreams a bit more weight in this chapter, and making the connection explicit was a nice way to do so. And what’s the point of writing a fic about the Amells if I don’t get to indulge in my Amell family headcanons? :D
> 
> I hope it’s not too confusing so far for those who haven’t religiously studied the Amell family entries in _World of Thedas_ like I have, but the next part should help clear things up! (Fenris is still very much in the dark, anyway.) Thank you so much for reading, and I would love to hear what you think! ♥ Feel free to find me on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/) and say hello!


	3. Mara

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A still-grieving Hawke fends off the Qunari invasion, but not without great cost to herself. In the welcome reprieve that follows, a chance encounter or two allow Fenris to uncover a great deal about the Amells as well as about Hawke herself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ack, sorry for the wait! I wrote the first draft for this back in October, but this is another very long one, and there was a lot of work left to do! Thank you all for sticking with me, and I hope this is worth the wait. ♥ And many thanks to [Sasskarian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sasskarian) and [BlondePomeranian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondePomeranian) for reading this over on such short notice!
> 
> Also, this fic now has music to go with it! I was lucky enough to win [Bettydice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BettyKnight/pseuds/bettydice)’s piano giveaway on tumblr, and she came up with this utterly _gorgeous_ [theme for the Amell family](http://bettydice.tumblr.com/post/172077926689/aban-asaara-wanted-an-amell-family-theme-for-her), so please give it a listen!
> 
> Please note that this chapter contains graphic violence and injury, death (including non-graphic animal death), and non-graphic pregnancy/childbirth.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Mother says we should remember the Amells because that sort of thing could happen to any of us. You know the old saying: “A Marcher’s fortune rises and falls with the tide.” If you ask me, this is just another misfortune that magic brings to honest folk. Andraste help that poor family, whatever lies in store for them.
> 
> —Excerpt from a letter written by Lady Amelie de Montfort

Hawke means to die at the Arishok’s hands.

No one sees it then, of course. Not even Fenris. Every thin-lipped face ringing the Keep, the glint of gold leaf on the accursed Tome of Koslun, the dent left on Aveline’s breastplate by a Qunari spearhead—Fenris sees all that and more, but Hawke means to die at the Arishok’s hands, and Fenris does not see it.

Strange that he does not, when moonlight falls dead and pale on her brow, etched with that dark thought. Instead he sees Dumar staring back at him, eyes empty in the middle of his severed head, and in their glassy reflection he catches a glimpse of another reality: had Leandra not disgraced the Amell name, had she not left Kirkwall with the father of her unborn child, it’s the head of her own father, Lord Aristide, that would have rolled down the stone steps of the Keep that night, crowned with the iron circlet of the Viscount. Leandra’s daughter would have been whisked away to the Gallows upon coming into her magic, never to know her true father or bear his name. Would she have been the same woman, then, without twenty Fereldan winters to make her heart twice as warm? Without her freedom and her family to fight for all her life?

In that split second, Fenris knows otherwise. Had she been an Amell in name as well as blood, Hawke would be just one more corpse littering the city while her family was herded into the Keep and slaughtered like cattle by the Qunari—and after setting sails in the blood sheeting the streets, Isabela would never have returned to Kirkwall to stand up to the Arishok. “If you’re going to duel anyone, duel me,” she spits now, clutching the spear shafts slanted crosswise in front of her.

The Arishok darts a mere glance in her direction. “You are not basalit-an,” he answers, upper lip twisted in contempt. “You are unworthy.”

Fenris finds himself wishing—hateful, _wretched_ thought—that Hawke would leave Isabela to face her comeuppance in Par Vollen, but Hawke wouldn’t be Hawke if she did, and he expects no less than the answer she gives. “Let’s dance,” she says, tossing her hair over her shoulder with a well-timed smile.

If he even notices the shadow that flits across her face then, he gives it no more thought than a scud of clouds before the moon. But it is the same as any other shadow, stretching as the night deepens to cover his dreams like a black film.

In his dreams, the Arishok towers over Hawke, and in the shadow he casts over her, Fenris sees the ogre that crushed her sister’s skull under its enormous hand, a slab of veiny dark skin and lank hair. He sees the squirming mass of the darkspawn clawing their way out of the ground, the corruption sticking to every blade of grass in Lothering and defiling the memory of everything she’s ever loved: the cellar where her father taught her her first spells, the orchard where she played hide-and-seek with the twins, the thatched roof of the barn where she kissed the milkmaid once. In that shadow he sees the disease that took her father, the madman that sewed her mother’s head onto another woman’s neck, he sees the slope of his own shoulders as he left her room that night, he sees hunger and despair and every other fear that lurks in the pit of her stomach now set free—

In his dreams, Fenris sees what Hawke saw that night in the Keep: the Arishok, moonlight silvering the tines of his horns, and a way out.

Hawke can’t just let herself die, though, no matter how much easier it’d be. Not in front of everyone who knows her by name. Not in front of _him_. So she dodges the swift arcs of the Arishok’s blades, strands of magic spilling loose from between her fingers, and keeps running, lest she catch green eyes among the blur of faces around her and see … what? Fear? Disappointment? _Indifference?_

 _At least the city is safe,_ she thinks when her body slams to the ground, blood dripping from her brow to be sucked into the crimson carpet, and Bela can’t hold it against her for at least _trying_ to save her arse, can she? _If anyone can outrun the bloody Qunari, it’s—_

Someone shrieks. Hawke rolls out of the way just as the Arishok’s axe strikes the floor, inches from her face. She scrambles to her feet, then limps across the throne room, sneaking little shallow breaths past her broken ribs. Her teeth are chattering. She shouldn’t be this cold after so much running around, but her leathers are sticking to her skin, stiff and soaked through with sweat.

 _Or blood,_ she realises when darkness starts swallowing everything past the fire gathering between her hands.

Hawke can’t afford to miss. Her vision swims, greying at the edges, but she keeps pouring magic into the flames. The indistinct shape of the Arishok strides towards her from the other end of the room, his step quick and confident. His sword shines dully in the dim room as he raises it, as if to slice through her fire.

_Just a little bit closer—_

Her spell scatters. He’s on her between one heartbeat and the next, and a great gasp goes around the room when he knocks the breath out of her with one punch to her stomach. Her legs go limp, but she doesn’t crumple to the ground. _When did he let go of his sword?_ she wonders, one last numb thought before wildfire tears through her. She would scream, but she can’t even catch her breath, the sharp tang of metal gurgling at the back of her mouth instead. A silver string of moonlight is sprouting from her belly, and it slices into her palms when she attempts to grab it, her movements sluggish and slow, as though she were moving through water.

The floor gives way under her tiptoes. For an instant she’s a child again, held up in her father’s arms and flying high, high, higher, the Lothering sun shining so bright it blinds her, searing the inside of her skull with its white glare even after she closes her eyes. _Papa,_ she wants to plead, _put me down,_ except that Papa is dead and she can feel _things_ breaking inside her, and all that comes out when she tries to speak is a mouthful of blood.

It’s the crossguard that breaks her fall. Her entire body rattles with the crunch of her ribs, chased by a tearing sound she knows as her own voice only for the blood that burns up her throat. Some distant part of her—maybe already halfway to the Void or the Maker’s side, whichever—sees what they all see: a windless pennant hanging limp at the end of the Arishok’s arm, five handspans of red steel sticking out of her.

 _Sorry, Isabela,_ she thinks.

Silence falls over the throne room like a pall.

Time stills. The Arishok may not even hold her up for long, but it feels like an eternity with the agony—and the _humiliation_ —burning through her like molten metal, while he brandishes her like a trophy in front of her brother, and her best friend, and the man she loves.

Someone says her name then. Maybe she imagines it in the roar of her own pulse in her ears, but it beats inside her like a heart, sets her blood alight and courses through her body before coming to rest at the core of her. Even teetering on the threshold of death, she knows that voice. Let it be the one thing she carries with her to the other side, then: all its rough whispers and deep rumbles and too-rare laughs, all the words and tongues it ever spoke and that she might have heard had she lived—

“Hawke,” Fenris says again, and she feels his voice in her mouth and the back of her eyes and fingertips so heavy, the very earth might be hanging from them—and yet she lifts one hand, then the other.

Her fingers curl around the Arishok’s horns.

He grunts and tries to swing her off his greatsword, but her grip holds even as the blade jolts through her again. Blood rises to her mouth in a thick, wet sob, then escapes her lips with the white mist of her exhale. Crimson droplets scatter to the floor like a broken string of pearls, while tendrils of ice swirl along his horns and slither across his face. If he makes a sound, it’s buried under the layer of rime that now thickens over his face, cracking and groaning like the peaks of the Frostbacks during snowmelt.

She tears one hand off his horn, ripping the skin off her palm, and presses it to his face almost tenderly, like a Revered Mother granting her blessing. With a broken, watery scream, she wrings out every last shred of magic left in her, until one last pulse of magic bursts out of her fingertips, shattering ice and bone alike into a spray of bloodied shards.

The Arishok falls, and Hawke with him, one hand still stuck to his horn; the other drags a red smear across the floor as she tries to push herself up, but the blade still sits clean through her, crosswise to her body, and keeps pulling her down.

“You could say that I”—she wheezes, and _shut up_ , Fenris wants to tell her, _you will only make it worse_ —“that I took the Arishok by the h—” but her last word drowns in the blood that gushes out of her mouth, while a patch of redder red spreads on the dyed wool of the carpet—

Fenris wakes all at once, the broken squelch of her voice still ringing between his ears, and sits up to see two eyes like amber marbles staring back at him by the bed. Maker’s Bark bites his trouser leg and gives it another tug, strong enough to pull him halfway off the mattress, then lets out a _borf!_ before scampering out of the room, nails clicking on the tiles.

“Hawke?” Fenris asks when he finds her crumpled on the bottom step of his marble staircase, leaning against the banister. “What are you doing here?”

Her eyes are tired when she raises them. She smiles, but it’s a wan, dilute thing. “Oh, just enjoying the view.”

He glances down at himself just in time to see the blush creep down the markings on his chest. Her hound did not leave him any choice but to rush out in nothing but the trousers he wears to bed—and her favour. Her gaze trips over his wrist, and Fenris feels more exposed in linen and a strip of red silk than if he were naked before her.

But she says nothing, so neither does he. “Can you stand?” he asks instead. Hawke nods her head, clutching the handrail. He wraps an arm around her shoulders to help her up to her feet, but she wobbles up the first two steps and soon turns pale from the effort.

“Let me,” he says. Mindful of her wound, he gathers her up in his arms to carry her up the sweep of stairs. She is light, and leaner than he remembers under the soft drape of her shirt, and for a moment he sees Anders bent over her broken body again, her blood running dark and thick between his fingers.

“Maybe I should get impaled by the Arishok more often,” she says, a weak laugh tickling his ear.

Ice slides down his throat, the autumn chill that still clings to her hands finding its way into his stomach. “Do not make light of this. You shouldn’t be up and moving, much less traipsing across Hightown,” he says, regretting his sharp tone when her eyes shutter. Something quieter, and softer, somehow, as if a blade could be soft, replaces the edge then. “You could have sent for me,” he adds, cresting the staircase as easy as he can.

“I know, but I needed out of the estate. I thought I could handle the walk here.”

He eyes the trestle table and longbench as he enters the room, then the armchair, but opts for the bed instead. “You snuck out, then.”

“And I shouldn’t have to sneak out of own my house,” she retorts, wincing as he lays her down onto the mattress. Maker’s Bark jumps on the bed to settle at her feet. “Oh, get off the bed, you rude boy,” she grumbles.

Fenris dismisses her concern with a wave of his hand, to her hound’s obvious delight. “They mean well,” he says.

He catches her gaze dart away as he pulls a clean shirt over his head. “I know,” she starts, her face suddenly very pink, “but I’m just about to rescind Anders’s right of passage through the cellar. And Maker bless his heart but Bodahn will not _quit it_. ‘My boy and I will see to everything, Messere, and I do mean _everything_. You just keep to bed.’”

Fenris laughs under his breath, combing his fingers through his hair. “Looking at you now, he may have a point.”

“Not you too.” Her blue eyes brighten. “Oh, I brought breakfast.” The basket waits at the bottom of the stairs, and a whiff of fresh, warm crust makes his mouth water when he flicks open the rattan-woven lid. “Serah Darrow’s apple turnovers, still warm from the oven, and goat’s milk,” she adds when he pulls out a glass bottle embedded with frost runes.

The milk is too rich for his tastes, but a dollop might nicely offset the bitterness of the roasted tea leaves in his cupboard, so he sticks a kettle of water over the fire. Hawke drinks her milk from a glass like a child while he tears pieces off a turnover, steam rising in fragrant plumes. The puffed pastry is light and warm, the apples inside so sweet he finds himself sucking the last of the stickiness off his fingertips. “Thank you,” he says around a mouthful, then wipes the crumbs off his chin when she points them out, the sight coaxing a smile out of her. “Aren’t you eating?”

She sips at her glass, then licks the milk off her upper lip. Fenris cannot claim to understand her, but she is easy to read, and something lurks under the mirth glittering on the surface of her eyes.

“Serah Darrow refused to let me pay for the turnovers,” she says like she was confessing to having stolen them. “The milk bottle was also free. And on my way here, I ran into the de Marignys and Lady Somerset, and they all thanked me for—for killing the Arishok, like he was the only problem with this otherwise fine city.” Heat rushes to her cheeks in red splotches; her eyes gleam. “But refugees are still starving in the undercity, mages are still tortured in the Gallows, and no one will lift a finger when the next creep starts preying on the people of the alienage.” She blinks hard once or twice, then gives him a tremulous smile. “Do you remember what the Arishok called the nobles in the Keep? _Dara_ -something?”

 _You feed, and feed, and complain only when your meal is interrupted_ , the Arishok thunders, somewhere in his memories. “ _Dathrasi_ ,” Fenris replies, and he has to force out of his head the crunch of Hawke’s ribs slamming against the hilt of the Arishok’s greatsword. “‘Swine.’”

Her mouth twists, more a grimace than a smile. “He was right. The Arishok was right. I mean, the Qun is utter bollocks, too, but … you know what I mean, right?”

“The Qun isn’t the solution, but that does not mean the Arishok’s assessment of Kirkwall was wrong.” And neither was his assessment of Hawke herself. Perhaps the man had seen the first green shoot of wisdom unfurl inside her. “He did call you basalit-an—an outsider worthy of respect.”

“And I killed him for a thief who turned tail the first chance she got.”

For once her expression is inscrutable. He wants to tell her she has him, but it seems so little in the face of all she has lost. “Do you wish you had let them take Isabela instead?”

“I don’t know. _No_. No, I don’t. And that’s just the thing. I didn’t do it for Kirkwall. I did it for _Bela_ , and now she’s gone and—” Her voice cracks, and a lone tear slips out of the corner of her eye to roll down her temple. She wipes it off, sniffling. “And my turd of a brother is making it all about himself, and I’m supposed to stand in front of the city and pretend I’m grateful, and it’s just … It’s shit, Fenris. All of this Champion business is _shit_ , and I just want it to go away.”

He understands. No matter how hard he tries to efface himself, they notice him too, now that the whole of Hightown has watched him trail after Hawke into the Keep the night of the Qunari invasion. They wanted nothing to do with her until she doused the flames that licked their way up the white gates of their mansions, but now that they owe her their lives, she has earned their recognition, begrudging though it may be.

A title will keep her safe, though, out of the Knight-Commander’s plated grasp, and if he can be allowed this bit of hypocrisy, he will gladly see her crowned and showered in empty glory.

“Consider: _you_ are a refugee and an apostate, and still they have made you their Champion. If I’ve learned anything from the Imperium, it’s that those at the top look nowhere but up. Your voice will carry better than anyone else’s in the Keep now—for better or for worse,” Fenris adds, quirking one corner of his mouth. “If you want to make this city better, this is your chance. They will listen to you.”

It draws a smile out of her, albeit for too short a moment. “You and I don’t always agree on what ‘better’ means, though.”

He blows out a deep breath. “I’m aware. Even so.”

Hawke mulls his words over, a small groove etched between her eyebrows. After a moment, her features smooth out again. “Thank you. And I hope this means I can keep counting on you to tell me when I’m about to mess up.”

“Nothing would please me more,” he replies with a chuckle.

Another fleeting, fragile smile, then her eyes drift off to the ceiling. When she speaks again, her voice has dropped to a whisper. “You know, I still think about Gascard and that wretched ritual sometimes. It was just as you said. I thought I was above it all, but … nothing else mattered except finding Mother in that moment. If it weren’t for you, I don’t know how far I could’ve …” She trails off, then looks at him, her face set in the quiet confidence of a decision made. “I’m glad we’ve met, Fenris. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Fenris nods, unsure how else to react. These are just words, and he knows better than anyone how little words mean—and yet. No one—least of all a _mage_ —has ever apologised to him and meant it. No mage he knows has ever humbled themselves so before their fallibility. Even the abomination and the witch Hawke calls her friends have never looked upon their faults with anything other than hubris. It is all that Fenris has come to expect from their ilk, and never did he expect anything else from Hawke herself when he first met her in the alienage. She’d take her coin and leave, and he would be better off for it. Little did he know then that her help that night had already sent his existence off course, a star catching a stray moon in its orbit, and though he would not see it for years to come, her light now shines everywhere his eyes come to rest: the basket of apple turnovers and goat’s milk, the rustling of the kettle over the fire, the book left open on the table amidst scraps of parchment, the sun gleaming green through the potted herbs on the sill.

If not his life itself, he owes Hawke the chance to live on his own terms. He is not _glad_ they met: he cannot conceive of a world so hollow as to never ring with her laughter again. That his dreams should taunt him with visions of the day she almost died—

He should tell her about the dreams.

His pulse quickens at the thought. It started with the night he spent with her, after all, perhaps awakened by the touch of her magic on his markings—though nothing of the sort has ever happened _before_ —and who else can he trust with this?

The kettle starts whistling. Fenris takes it off the fire, then throws a handful of roasted tea leaves into the bubbling water before rummaging around the cupboards for mugs. He scrubs one clean, frowning at the cracked porcelain while he rolls his tongue around his mouth, stringing together the words to shape his thoughts.

He takes a breath, then turns back around with a cup of tea in each hand—and finds Hawke slumped back on his bed, her chest rising and falling in slow, even breaths.

For all her magic, she looks so— _mortal_. Frail, and fragile, in a way he would never have thought possible until the dreams. Something swells inside his chest—a lightly aching burst, and he has to quench the impulse to wipe the dried tears on her cheeks where the skin turns pink when she bursts into laughter, or when she has a little too much to drink, or when he catches her looking at him.

Instead he pulls the coverlet over her sleeping form, then scratches Maker’s Bark behind the ears. “Look after your mistress, will you?”

The hound gives his hand an affectionate lick in answer, little nubbin of a tail wagging, and curls up at Hawke’s feet. His round, intelligent eyes remain trained on him as Fenris sits down to resume _Cautionary Tales for the Adventurous_ where he left off last night, warming his hands around the steaming mug of tea.

* * *

The Blooming Rose—the height of _bas_ depravity according to the Qunari, and on that at least Fenris agrees—is back on its dainty little feet while the rest of the city still limps along.

Kirkwall still creaks and groans, ropes and pulleys hauling timber and stone from the docks to Hightown to cobble the streets and repair the burned roofs, and the smoke of pyres has barely cleared that new strings of lanterns bob in the late-Parvulis wind. Perfume conceals the lingering stench of fear, and powder and rouge, the frazzled expression everybody wears in the wake of the invasion. Of course, an enterprise whose main commodity is illusions has no trouble putting up the pretence that the First Battle of Kirkwall is long behind. Besides, what better place to forget one’s brush with death than between the thighs of some mewling creature?

Business is thriving—and so is crime, for better or for worse. His pockets are full of Coterie gold as Fenris leaves Harlan’s office after a string of mercenary jobs, wending his way through the swishing silks and sashaying hips of the Rose. One hand on the hilt of his sword is enough for patrons to give him a wide berth, and Madam Lusine’s girls have long learned that the studied purse of their lips is wasted on him.

“Hey, uh. _You_ ,” someone says by the bar. Fenris pays the words no more mind than he does the clink of glasses and the high-pitched trill of the women’s laughter—at least until a moist, warm hand wraps around his wrist.

He whirls around, yanking his arm back, and finds himself nose to nose with Gamlen as he stumbles off his stool. Behind the bar, Quintus stills, bottle of liqueur in hand, while the other patrons seated at the bar gawk at them, holding their breath.

He drops his gaze to the favour around his wrist, and Gamlen removes his hand as though he’d been burned. “I apologise,” Fenris starts as the men start breathing again. “You startled me.”

“I can see that,” Gamlen snorts as he pulls himself back on the stool. “What was your name again?”

“Fenris,” he answers, readjusting the strip of scarlet silk.

“Right. Fenris. Buy you a drink? I won’t tell my niece you were here,” he adds before barking out a laugh.

Droplets of golden light splash onto the wooden counter as he swishes the amber liquid in his glass. Not his first, judging from the flush of his face and the slur of his speech. No point arguing with him, then. The man is deep in his cups and regrets already, likely only hankering for the company of a familiar face, so instead Fenris accepts his offer with a nod and settles on the stool next to him.

“Quintus, get my friend here a glass of—whatever that was,” Gamlen says before casting a sidelong glance at Fenris. “Thought you’d be at the Keep.”

“They will not want me there.”

He shrugs. “My niece would. Bet she wants you, period. Leandra didn’t approve, I remember.” He leans his head towards him conspiratorially. “She’s dead, you know,” he adds in a rough whisper. “Nothing stopping you now.”

Fenris almost excuses himself then, but Quintus has just poured him a finger of honey whiskey, and the glass slides along the smooth, polished mahogany of the bar before coming to a stop before him. “Leandra had little to do with it.”

“Huh,” Gamlen says, then laughs. “Champion of Kirkwall not good enough for you?” Fenris takes a first sip, refusing to grace the question with an answer, but Gamlen doesn’t seem to expect one. “Now there’s a story. If you’d seen her when she first got here, all skin and bones, you’d never have guessed she’d end up saving the Maker-damned city and restoring the Amell name to glory. Always figured she’d get herself killed for poking that little nose of hers into the wrong people’s business.”

Fenris tries to ignore Gamlen’s drunken ramblings in favour of the honey-sweet taste lingering on his tongue, but he cannot help himself. “What happened to the Amells?” he ventures between two sips.

He snorts. “What did _not_ happen to the Amells, you mean. Let’s see … Leandra was instantly smitten with that Circle mage, Malcolm, then got herself with child. Now _that_ was a scandal if there ever was one: broke off her betrothal to the Comte de Launcet, and ran off to Ferelden with her turnip and a bloody entourage of Grey Wardens. Wish I’d asked her about that now that I think about it,” he adds with a chuckle. “Anyway, did our mother in, that. Father might still have stood a chance to get himself voted Viscount, but then our cousin Revka’s kids all turned out to be mages, and afterwards everyone was whispering about the so-called Amell curse.

“Then Damion—Revka’s brother—was arrested. Bloody idiot couldn’t tell his arse from his elbow, so putting together a smuggling operation? Had to have been framed. Twenty sovereigns says it was the Coterie pulling strings to keep Dumar’s incompetent arse on the throne and Fausten’s as far away from it as possible.” He pauses, looking abashed for a moment. “Bah, it’s bad luck to speak ill of the dead, but if Dumar didn’t have wet string for a spine, then maybe we wouldn’t have had a bloody oxman invasion on our hands.”

Fenris stares down at the sheen of the torches on the smooth surface of the bar. “Who was Fausten?” he asks, gooseflesh prickling his arms. Revka’s name felt like a quart of ice water dumped into his veins.

“Revka and Damion’s father. Spent all his coin trying to clear Damion’s name, then ended up borrowing from the Council of Five before kicking the bucket, so guess who they came after to claim their due? Good ol’ Gamlen, of course.”

“I’m sorry,” Fenris says, and finds that he means it. “Where are Revka and Damion now?”

His mouth quirks into something that might have been a smile. “Damion was found dead in his cell. They never said dead of _what_ , though. And Revka just vanished Maker knows where some time after that. Had the right idea, if you ask me.”

Fenris says nothing. He thinks of the Waking Sea rising to swallow Revka’s body as it shattered against the crags of the Wounded Coast, the painted skin of her portrait pale as the lilies on her windowsill. He thinks of Leandra’s head lolling atop another woman’s neck, of Hawke’s lyrium-bright eyes burning in the middle of her face …

 _And at last, her face_ , he hears Quentin say. _Oh, this beautiful face …_

He takes a deep swallow of whiskey to melt the ice that curled around his chest, then breathes past its searing burn, forcing himself to focus on Gamlen’s words again.

“… so within a generation the Amells had become the laughingstock of Hightown,” he mumbles, “then little Amabel came along, got herself crowned Champion, and restored the family name to greatness. Won’t take it for herself, of course, because ‘Amabel Amell’ sounds bloody stupid, but at least now the line doesn’t end with some worthless wastrel anymore.”

He forgets to put up the pretence of a jest, and it comes out sharp and bitter as a poisoned blade. Fenris steals a glance at him. Just a man past his prime, carrying the lifelong wounds of a battle lost against fortune. “You are Hawke’s family,” he starts. “Why aren’t you at the Keep?”

Gamlen frowns at his whiskey for a time. “I—was needlessly harsh on the girl when her mother died,” he answers when Fenris does not expect it anymore. “Blamed her and magic and whatnot. Didn’t mean any of it, but we haven’t really spoken since. And if I show up at her big Champion ball, they’ll say good-for-nothing Gamlen is there to brown-nose his niece and mooch off her, as always.” He tosses back the rest of his glass, grimacing. “What’s your excuse? Trust me, no one bats an eye at an Amell with an elf anymore,” he chuckles. “I’ve trod that path well enough by now.”

Fenris licks his lips, tasting faintly of honey and excuses as the warmth of the whiskey blooms in his chest. “I would rather not draw attention to myself for various reasons. Hawke understands.”

“And yet you better believe she’ll spend the whole night hoping to see you there,” Gamlen snickers. “Takes after her mother, that one. Both got their heads up in the clouds, waiting to be swept off their feet.” His shoulders droop around a sigh. “Leandra would’ve been so damned proud of her,” he adds after a pause, his voice brittle. He brings his glass to his lips, then frowns when he finds it empty, the downturned corners of his mouth quivering. “Maker damn it,” he mutters, his glass clinking against the counter when he sets it down too hard, then rubs his swollen eyelids. “We weren’t even writing for the best part of twenty-five years, you’d think it wouldn’t hurt this bloody much.”

But he’s not talking to him, not really, and Fenris has nothing to offer except his presence. Would that supposed sister of his—this _Varania_ —mourn him too after all this time? Or has she already grieved for the brother she lost long ago to some wretched ritual, the brother who was excised out of him to make way for the lyrium?

Does she even want him back?

Does she even _exist_?

By the time Fenris drains his glass, Gamlen hasn’t spoken again—hasn’t even moved, in fact, still leaning with his forehead against his hand.

“Thank you for the drink,” Fenris says. He slides off the bar stool, slings his scabbard over his shoulder, and starts towards the door when Gamlen grabs his wrist again—though he has enough sense to remove his hand at once this time.

“Hey—Fenris, right? I know it’s none of my damned business, but man to man? Just go to that thrice-damned party if she means anything to you at all,” he says, blue Amell eyes resting heavy on the scarlet scarf tied around his wrist.

The warmth of the whiskey fends off the crisp autumn night as Fenris starts on his way home. He tries to picture himself walking into the Keep, all of Hightown’s eyes on—what do they call him again?—the _murder elf_ as they whisper into each other’s ear. That look has been pressed on him often enough in Tevinter that he can conjure it at will, equal parts fright and desire. _Look how they look at you, my pet. They fancy they too could tame you, but they know you will never be loyal to anyone but me, won’t you?_

He swats at his cheek, where too often Danarius’s fingers lingered while he spoke of loyalty, and love, and all these lies Fenris believed for so long. He _chose_ Hawke: he wouldn’t be at the Keep as her thing, he knows, but as her friend—or worse, her _lover,_ if Hightown’s wagging tongues felt so inclined, and it doesn’t seem worth dimming her light with his shadow, not when he’s long lost her to the ruinous beast that dwells in his chest, when he’s walked out on her in the middle of the night, stamping out her heart after she gave herself to him in more ways than one.

 _An Amell tradition_ , he can still hear her say. _A favour for the one you’ve grown fond of_.

The evening bells toll. Nobles are already streaming into the Keep in twos and fours; the city banners flap in a gust of wind, and a woman shrieks as her hat flies off her head and slides along the cobblestones with a whirl of autumn leaves.

Fenris heads down the street that leads to his mansion, then starts running.

* * *

“So, elf. You gonna let her know you came, or are you just here for the sparkling wine and frilly cakes?”

Fenris throws Varric a glance, then turns back to the swirling, shimmering sea of silk and velvet below. “I’m not exactly dressed for the occasion,” he replies, gesturing at his own clothes. Short of showing up in armour, he had to make do with what he could find in the mansion’s chests and dressers. The moths and rats had spared little, and most of the finery he found was tailored for humans of a decidedly ampler build, but he did scrounge up a servant’s long-sleeved tunic and vest, which, at least from a distance, gives an impression of simple elegance worn over his leather trousers.

Still. Were it not for Donnic, Fenris has no doubt he would never have been let into the Keep at all (halfway through the Seneschal’s lukewarm speech, no less). He has been keeping to the mezzanine ringing the ballroom since, not wanting to attract the attention of a less indulgent guardsman.

Varric laughs. “Still dressed to impress anyway, what with that scowl you’re wearing and—look at you!— _shoes_.”

Fenris smiles into his glass despite himself. The sparkling wine _is_ delightful: smooth, and crisp with a mellow aftertaste, like the scent of ripe fruit in an old wooden basket at the market, bubbles tickling the roof of his mouth with each fizzing sip. And more importantly, he’s glad for it—and the Rose’s whiskey—dulling the honed edge of his awareness. He hasn’t been in a ballroom since Minrathous, seven years ago, yet he slipped back all too easily into his erstwhile slave-habits. Even with a long-stemmed glass in his hand rather than a sword, even without the threat of blood magic hiding behind every pillar, it took half a glass before he stopped catching himself darting glances at the shadows and tracking the movements of every noble come to offer the Champion their regards.

Hawke has more enemies than friends in the room, he suspects. Most Kirkwallers would probably sooner forget that they owe their freedom to the Fereldan _parvenue_ at whose feet they used to spit rather than bestow titles and honours upon her, but if a flourish of ribbons and skirts can erase the afterimage of their Viscount’s decapitated head rolling down the steps of the throne room, then they will not spill blood tonight.

Instead they make merry, surrounded by a near-phalanx of Templars and guardsmen, armed and armoured—and in the midst of it all, the only mage openly known as such in the city, gliding across the room in the arms of the exiled prince of Starkhaven.

Varric cackles when Hawke trips and crushes Sebastian’s foot, while Fenris winces in sympathy. Even from his vantage point he can see the eyebrows shoot up her forehead as she stammers an apology, but the prince’s face is a practiced mask. He steadies her without so much as a grimace of pain, though he does seem to favour his left foot as he steers her around the room afterwards, one gloved hand firm on her thin waist, the other linked with hers. Her skirts bloom around her legs when he twirls her out of his arms before guiding her back to himself; the gold-thread wreaths of prophet’s laurel stitched on the midnight blue of her dress ripple to life in the shivering candlelight, and her laughter is swept away in the gliding notes of the strings, then scatters amongst the clink of glasses and chandeliers.

Hawke in the arms of a royal, and it is not incongruous in the least.

A strange burden, her affection. Fenris, even in the best garments he could find—wrinkled, undyed wool and stiff, coarse linen—feels out of place. Is it nothing more than her insatiable desire to right wrongs that should turn her gaze towards a man so broken as he, a shadow amidst the shadows that stretch behind the pillars and under the overhangs of the ballroom?

His gaze comes to rest on the scarlet silk at his wrist. _You don’t have to keep wearing that, you know_ , she said once, and if not for the crest stitched on a corner, he might have removed it for good already. But every time he has come close, he pictured Hawke—whose hands were made to call forth flames and storms—with needle and thread and her tongue sticking out from the corner of her mouth, embroidering a scarf while thinking of him; every time he remembered how those same hands trembled as she handed him the square of folded silk, and every time he tied it back around his wrist, where his blood now beats against the crest of the Amell house.

And now he watches how much better she fits into another man’s arms, dancing on the same ballroom floor where once her mother fell in love.

He closes his eyes. Varric either grows bored with his lack of conversation or gets tired of tiptoeing to see beyond the banister of the mezzanine, and his footfalls and the creak of his leather boots move to the nearest coil of stairs. The delicate melody of the Orlesian _courante_ is chased by the winding strings of an Antivan _zarabanda_. Behind his eyelids, Fenris sees the lavish affairs that used to be thrown at the Amell estate: all of Kirkwall’s nobility packed into the great hall of the mansion, gowns sweeping across the marble tiles to the sweet song of violins, or perhaps gasping with joy at the dancers from far-off Afsaana, who sailed on a barge from Rivain for the very occasion.

And still the young Lord Aristide Amell, the man behind it all, would only have eyes for the eldest daughter of the Walkers, Lady Bethann, whose name Hawke’s sister bore for too short a time. _There_ are _less profligate ways of courting a woman, Brother_ , Fausten would laugh, but nothing—not even the gossamer scarves whirling around the dancers in swathes of orange and turquoise and gold, beaded fringes tinkling to the rhythm of their steps—could tear his eyes away from the proud column of her neck and the pleats of hair golden as her daughter’s after her.

Then Leandra tarnished their good name by letting a mage swell her belly with his bastard, and sorrow shriveled Bethann’s heart before the wasting sickness swept in and away with the rest of her.

When Fenris opens his eyes again, Hawke is looking up at him from the ballroom floor, emotion blooming pink across her face. She winds her way towards the spiraling staircase through the throngs of starched skirts and cartwheel ruffs, until the de Montforts bar her path, armed with simpering smiles and affected airs. She dons her Amell mask again. Her curtsy is clumsy, too low for the guest of honour, and her eyes keep darting too-bright glances in his direction while she picks at the shirred cuffs of her lace gloves. The de Montforts don’t notice, too busy trying to ingratiate themselves with the Champion to care.

Fenris drains his wine before stepping to the opposite coil of stairs—and he shouldn’t hear it across the crowded ballroom, across the glinting nobles laughing loud enough to drown the lingering fear; he shouldn’t hear it above the winding, heady Antivan melody, but his name somehow wends its way to his ear as though he had been waiting for it.

His eye finds Hawke like there was no one else but them in the ballroom. She stands at the bottom of the opposite staircase, the de Monforts forgotten or dismissed or whisked away by some other group of nobles. _And yet you better believe she’ll spend the whole night hoping to see you there_ , Gamlen said, and Fenris feels his mouth curl against his will. A smile lights her face up from within—softer, somehow relieved, a gleaming, priceless jewel that shines brighter than the cobalt gemstones dangling from her ears, and it sinks into his chest as surely as if she’d dropped one of her earrings into his palm.

Fenris puts his empty glass on a servant’s tray and nods his head in thanks before leaving the Keep.

She belongs to Kirkwall tonight. Let them have her.

* * *

Of course, Fenris should have known that Kirkwall would be much too greedy to let Hawke go after one night. Parvulis melts into Frumentum, then into Umbralis, and the Champion is swept away in the end-of-year whirlwind of balls and celebrations. Before he even knows it, fences and trees are latticed in hoarfrost in the mornings, and the next time he sees her, it’s behind her Satinalia mask, eyes glittering under sequined scales and horns carved out of ivory.

She has a present for him as she does every year, a spray of tiny blossoms tucked into the ribbon securing the wrapping cloth, while all he has to offer her is a paper knife in the shape of a High Dragon in flight—“to open your letters or stab their senders,” he jests to mask his embarrassment, because what could the Champion of Kirkwall possibly have want for?

Yet she seems inordinately delighted with her gift, and before the night is out he spies it pinned into the hair gathered at the back of her head, the dragonbone stark against the black of her locks. For the first time, the present he receives from her is joined by three more: a bottle of what used to be Sebastian’s favourite vintage before he took his vows, an advance copy of the new _Hard in Hightown_ , and a chessboard from Donnic and Aveline—as much a gift to Fenris as to Donnic himself, he presumes, likely unbeknownst to Aveline.

He doesn’t quite know what to make of it at first. How many chess games unfolded before him in Tevinter, while he stood watch and poured wine, sniffing the air for the first whiff of blood magic? How many fates were sealed while Danarius’s pieces closed in on his opponent’s like hands around their throat? How many ended with the white tiles stained red, either spilled by Fenris’s own blade or an upset cup of poisoned wine?

How sweet the discovery that he is skilled at it, once given the freedom to play for himself.

Donnic’s tower clacks against the board. “I think I’m going to propose,” he announces.

Fenris looks at him from over the steeple of his own fingers. “A poor diversion tactic,” he says, then elects to move one of his rosewood mages across the board. The chess pieces are pleasantly heavy in his hand, the board smooth and polished, reflecting the flickering candlelight. “Mage takes pawn.”

“I’m serious,” Donnic defends himself, darting only the merest glance to his pawn as it joins the other pieces Fenris captured. “What do you think? I don’t want to involve anyone from the Guard, and Hawke can’t keep a secret to save her life.”

His mouth curls of its own accord. Hawke would never be able to keep a straight face around Aveline were she to catch wind of a proposal. “Have you not talked about this with Aveline?”

“Well, yes, but more as something that would happen at some point in the future, not … _now_. You think it’s too early? We’ve been together a year.” He lifts his glass off the table, then puts it back down. “It _is_ too early, isn’t it?”

Fenris lets his sip of wine roll on his tongue for a moment. “Aveline has been married before. She is practical and values tradition, at least to an extent.” He raises an eyebrow at him. “But why not wait, if you’re uncertain?”

Donnic blows out a deep breath. “The oxmen,” he replies, twirling the stem of his glass between his fingers. “When they started throwing spears at us, and Brendan and Adrianne fell, it felt like everything was—slipping away. Like none of it was real, but everything was too real at the same time. You know what I mean?”

Most of the life Fenris remembers was spent waiting for such moments. Try as he might, he remembers no fear—not even surprise—when he heard the commotion break out inside the Qunari compound; just the comforting weight of the hilt in his hands and the whistle of his blade as he ran it through the guards posted at the gates before kicking them open for Hawke and Aveline to emerge with half as many guardsmen as had accompanied them.

It was a long run to the Viscount’s Keep while he tried to piece the story together from the accusations they cast at each other. Crimson mottled Aveline’s cheeks; Hawke’s knuckles were white around the grip of her staff. “I’d have killed your guardsmen with my bare hands if they’d touched one hair on my sister’s head,” she spat, eyes bright with firelight, the marble at her feet darkening where one teardrop fell. Hawke had a sister before, Fenris remembered then, and he wondered if he would have done the same for Varania, before the ritual wiped all memory of her.

Then the thought was swept away amidst ashes and sparks, but Kirkwall withstood the storm, as did Hawke, and Aveline, and the steel-strong bonds between them. The two women were joined in their grief, long ago, the rips and tears left in the wake of Wesley’s and Bethany’s deaths scarring over to stitch them together as sure as blood ties. And even as they lay blame at the other’s feet for hurtling the city into chaos, the Qunari invasion only sewed another suture between them.

Fenris shrugs. “It was a long time coming. Merely a matter of when.”

“Maybe.” Donnic brings the glass to his lips then swishes the wine around his mouth for a moment, staring at the chessboard. “I was still fumbling to unsheathe my sword when Aveline ran the first Qunari through. Hawke was halfway through a spell, but Aveline had us retreat instead. I just remember thinking, ‘If we make it out alive, I’m marrying this woman.’” He looks at Fenris. “You must have felt the same when Hawke”—he cuts himself off, then clenches his jaw as if to brace himself for his reaction—“when Hawke got skewered like spit-roasted meat. You had to be afraid you’d lose her.”

“Hawke was never mine to lose,” Fenris says under his breath.

“You know what I mean,” Donnic sighs, then reaches for one of his pawns before dropping his hand back down on the table. “I just don’t want to waste any more time, you know?”

An image falls before his eyes, clear as a picture book dropped open at his feet: Hawke, puffing up her cheeks in impatience, while Aveline paces around the sunlight flooding her office, fretting about how best court Donnic. _The Maker has a sense of humour, it seems_. “Nothing is keeping you. The woman almost brought your mother wheat and goats as dowry. Perhaps you two are already married under Fereldan custom,” he adds with a chuckle.

“If Fereldan custom involves copper marigolds and the most awkward patrol of the age, then yes,” he laughs, then slaps his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Maker damn it, I should have proposed on Satinalia.”

“Wintersend, then. Auspicious. With a ring of silverite.”

Donnic blinks. “Silverite?”

“It doesn’t rust; it’s strong and durable. Gold is much too frivolous for Aveline.” Fenris brings his glass to his lips, then stops midway. “Or veridium, perhaps. She likes green.”

His mouth hooks into a smirk. “Well, well, didn’t think _you’d_ have much of an opinion on the matter.” He finishes his wine and refills both their glasses, thumbing a drop off the end of the now-empty bottle. “And you, friend? Nothing stopping you either. Hawke would take you back.”

Fenris sighs, sending a ripple across the crimson surface of his wine. “And for her sake, she shouldn’t.”

“Isn’t that for her to decide?”

“No.” He takes a swallow, but it leaves a sharp taste at the back of his throat. “She doesn’t understand what she’s asking for. I have naught to give her except this—this _void_ , and if I were to let her, she would stumble head first into it.”

Donnic considers him for a moment, and Fenris has to avert his gaze, afraid of what could be glimpsed inside. “You have to get in touch with your sister.”

“And what does _that_ have to do with anything?” he asks, arching one eyebrow.

He turns his palms over, then drops his hands back. “ _Everything_. You keep circling back to this talk of emptiness, but you’re just refusing to see what Hawke sees. What we _all_ see. Look, I know I don’t know what it’s like,” he adds when Fenris opens his mouth to retort, his tone apologetic, “but I think it’s what’s holding you back. And I think this Varania can help.”

His shoulders drop. The first flare of anger burns itself out just as quick, whooshing out of his wine-weakened hold to give way to the raw ache underneath. “It’s not just that,” he sighs, pressing his fingertips to his closed eyelids.

“What else, then?”

 _So much_ , Fenris thinks—then only realises he spoke aloud when Donnic gives him a commiserating grin, the light at the bottom of his eyes gentle and warm. “Well, the night is young,” he tries.

And so Fenris tells him everything. The lashes he earned himself once by asking if he had family or friends among the slaves he walked past every day in the sunlit halls of the Minrathous estate. The slave-hunters who almost caught him on the road to Kirkwall, who threatened to kill every last one of his family if he didn’t surrender, who claimed to have everything they needed with them to hunt them down. The chest in the alienage, the absurd hope that had taken root inside him despite the certainty that this could only be a trap. The young woman who almost got herself killed in his stead, and told him—confused, curious—that the chest was empty.

Fenris returned to the hideout by himself the next day to search the chest for a false bottom, but it was as Hawke said. Nothing there except a chest as empty as he was.

He cannot be what she wants. Not when that wretched seed of hope ties him again to Danarius’s hand like a puppet on a string. Not when all that he has ever remembered of his past was the memories brought forth then scattered under her touch. Not when too often he dreams of her almost letting herself die, as if to remind him of what he stands to lose—

And then Fenris tells Donnic about the dreams too.

Later he will blame the wine.

He feels— _deflated_ afterwards, like he had been half made up of words until then. Watching Donnic run a hand through his hair and blink hard a few times, he wants to take them all back. Instead he excuses himself and heads down to the cellar, where he breathes the damp air that smells of mould and oaken casks, until the earthen floor leaves his feet aching and the wintery draughts raise gooseflesh on his arms.

By the time he returns with a bottle of Rialto Bay, Donnic seems to have made some sense out of his barrage of words. “I was thinking about these, uh … dreams, or _visions_ you’re having,” he starts, watching as Fenris pours him a glass. “Lyrium bridges the gap to the Fade, right? What if some of Hawke’s magic is clinging to your markings, and it’s been giving you those dreams?”

Fenris hesitates. “I did consider it might have something to do with the markings, but their state appears unchanged, if Sandal is to be believed.” He subjected himself to the young dwarf’s enthusiastic palpating once, while Hawke still lay unconscious in the wake of her duel against the Arishok, but somehow the assurance that his markings were not killing him or whittling his mind down offered little in the way of comfort. “Some sort of blood magic compulsion, perhaps?”

“Come on, no blood mage would waste that kind of power on giving you bad dreams. And you’d _know_ , right?” Donnic considers him, rubbing his chin with one hand. “It’s got to be Hawke. She’s the only mage you’ve been with, isn’t she?”

Fenris feels his face flush. “There—hasn’t been anyone else since.” Or before, for that matter. No one of his choosing, anyway. What would be the point of seeking fleeting pleasure when it comes at the cost of pain?

No, what he sought with Hawke was—something else. Had he let something in by _wanting_ so much? A speck of her magic caught in the ever-revolving conduit of his markings?

Could it really be so simple?

“Right,” Donnic replies lightly. “You know who you should ask about this? A _mage_. Like the one who gave you those dreams, for instance.” He laughs into his glass at that. “Better dreams than some of those diseases going around, I suppose.”

“Yes, laugh while you can,” Fenris retorts around a laugh of his own, much to his own surprise. The thought that more magic, however innocent, could have wormed its way inside him sits with him like dust in his eye, but for now he breathes easier regardless. “I’m cleaning you out before the night is over,” he adds, moving his Templar across the chessboard.

A triumphant grin spreads across Donnic’s face. “Says the one who just left his Viscountess hanging out.”

“ _What?_ ” Fenris squints at the board. Sure enough, Donnic’s remaining ebony mage and tower both stand two moves away from the rosewood Viscountess. “So it _was_ all a distraction,” he says, then smirks at Donnic’s feigned innocence. “Prepare for war, guardsman.”

* * *

For a short while after Donnic has left, their conversation and the wine they shared hold Fenris aloft, and he sits with the hand-cut swan quill and inkwell—Serault glass “the colour of his eyes”—that Hawke gave him on Satinalia.

He scratches a “V” on the corner of the page, then stops. He does not dare defile the sheet of paper with his poor penmanship or his sister’s name with the wrong runes. And so he sits there, long enough for the ink to dry at the tip of the quill, the words that flowed in his mind moments ago now dammed.

How can he claim her as his blood when he does not even remember her name for himself?

_And would she even know the runes spell her name on the page?_

By the time smoke rises in black, shivering tendrils from the untrimmed wicks of the candles, his palm is stained with the ink that covers the half-dozen sheets filled with his tottery handwriting: sentences written and rewritten, some crossed off with long, furious strokes, many more left hanging mid-word.

Fenris feeds them all to the fire before letting himself fall into bed.

* * *

He dreams of an elven woman that night—not his sister, he knows, because come morning he remembers her name, and her heart-shaped face and bright blue eyes shadowed under the furrow of her brow, and he knows they have never met, not even before the ritual. Sweat sticks chestnut tangles to her temples, and she clings to another woman’s arm as she lumbers back and forth across the room on swollen feet, hidden under the pregnant curve of her belly.

After arriving at the gates of Tantervale carrying precious little but the clothes on her back and the unborn child of a nobleman—a story so clichéd people hardly bother wasting sympathy on it—she should consider herself lucky she’s not delivering her own baby in an alley somewhere, at least. Who would have hired a chambermaid in her condition, then still so afflicted with morning sickness she could barely keep down a bit of stale bread, much less tidy the bedrooms?

But she hardly feels lucky now, leaning on the midwife’s arm and walking, walking back and forth across the room. Around them the other women busy themselves, boiling water and piling up towels on the cot where before long she will be called to lie down in childbed.

Agony shears through her anew. She tries to bite down the cry that rises to her mouth, but it seeps between her teeth into a strained moan. The pain doesn’t let up this time; instead it ripples down her back to her thighs in great thundering waves, and she finds herself clutching the windowsill while she gasps for air, struggling to match her breaths to Virna’s.

The midwife holds her from behind, massaging her lower back. “Come, Mara,” she says when the pang ebbs away at last. “It’s time.”

Mara shakes her head, clasping those last few seconds of reprieve in a useless bit of defiance. Her child will be born before sundown, no matter how much she wishes she could unsnarl every last twist of fate that took her to the Tantervale alienage, choked between walled-off estates and the mighty Minanter River. From the window she can see its roiling waters winding their way towards the Amaranthine Ocean. On a nearby bridge, a coach-and-four wheels down the granite-paved road that leads to the city gates.

Far to the south, where the Minanter forks into the Vimmark and runs through Wildervale to drain into the Waking Sea, lies the estate of the Amells. Not once did Mara think her own children would come into the world anywhere but in the manor where she herself was born, perhaps even delivered by the same hands. But no—the Amell estate has fallen to slavers, and she feels even more alone now than she did when she came home to that rickety little house in Lowtown, always empty save for some new excuse scribbled down on a note and—

She bursts into tears, gripping the sill. “I’m _scared_ ,” she sobs. She’s been scared since the day she recognised in her own body the same signs that scared the young Lady Leandra before her. Having seen the Lady Bethann’s face turn white as chalk upon hearing the news, and the red streak her palm left on her daughter’s cheek, Mara couldn’t fault her young mistress for taking her child where it would be wanted and loved. Likewise, she knew to expect nothing but empty promises and misery from the man she once loved, so she carried her fear and her baby where he would never find her.

But now, with the Free Marches between them and the pangs of childbirth tearing through her, she wishes nothing more than having him with her.

“All mothers are bonded through the pain of childbirth,” she hears Virna say, her voice soft and worn as old leather. “And yet they do it all over again,” she adds with a laugh.

“Not the pain,” Mara retorts between her teeth. “What comes _after_. Me, alone with a human child in a city I barely know …” she trails off and attempts to breathe through the pain mounting inside her again. This time she cries out despite her best efforts, this new pang like a scythe opening her up from the inside.

She knows better than to put up a fight when the women half-carry her to the bed and help her down. “Oh, child,” Virna says. “You’ve got all of us. And when that child is born, you won’t ever be alone again.”

* * *

“‘Find the place your wallop mallet came from,’” Hawke reads from the scrap of paper she found on the bandit’s body. “‘Your answers are there.’” She looks up at Gamlen just as he snatches the note out of her hand. “Where _did_ your wallop mallet come from?”

He gives a shrug. “How in blazes would I know?”

“Let me guess. When a mommy wallop mallet and a daddy wallop mallet love each other very much—”

“Spare us your juvenile wit,” Gamlen grumbles while Fenris attempts to disguise his laughter as a cough. “And for the last time, girl, stay out of my _damned business_.”

“Uncle, it becomes _my_ damned business when it almost gets me murdered in Darktown.” She sighs, gathering the empty wine bottles littering the room to put them in the wastebasket. “What’s that Gem of Keroshek, anyway? It must be special if it has a name.”

He groans. “They say whoever owns it never loses a bet. An old gambler’s fable, nothing more. Don’t trouble your pretty little head over it.”

Hawke looks up from the bread crumbs she is dusting off the table and into her handkerchief. “Says the one who’s been troubling his big, balding head over it,” she retorts, then tilts her head to the side. “Alright, not my best one.”

Gamlen snickers. “They didn’t make you Champion for your prodigious wit, that’s for certain.”

She opens her mouth, but Fenris clears his throat before the argument devolves further. “The wallop mallet may come from the alienage,” he says, hefting the oaken toy with one hand. “Woodcarvers there make them from the branches of the Vhenadahl.”

“Of course _you_ would know,” Hawke says, beaming at him. “Where would I be without you?”

“Still in the Deep Roads, I suspect,” he replies with a smirk.

Behind her shoulder, Gamlen rolls his eyes. “Into elves, huh? Takes all kinds, I suppose.”

“Seems it runs in the family,” Fenris retorts, and he only just has time to see Gamlen’s jaw slacken before Hawke bursts out laughing and pushes him out of her uncle’s house.

The spring storms have cleared the air for the first time in weeks, and only the faintest whiff of chokedamp lingers over Lowtown. Mornings are colder than Fenris would like, though the city will be uncomfortably warm by noon, and he raises his collar against the wind as they walk side by side, her hound padding after them. Sparrows—and even a red-breasted robin come home from wintering north—descend at their feet when Hawke throws them the bread crumbs she gathered … at least until Maker’s Bark comes running, scattering the flock with a few enthusiastic barks.

No answer by the Vhenadahl: only another riddle handed to them by a disinterested elf, this time leading them to the market square in Hightown. A few merchants gawk as the Champion of Kirkwall takes off her boots, rolls up her trousers, and wades in the fountain to retrieve a wax-sealed vial among the caprice coins that glint at the bottom. Her mabari jumps in after her, and she shrieks under the splash of cold water.

 _Still looking? Your father was almost him. Find him_ , this note reads, and the answer occurs to Fenris almost at once. “Your grandfather Lord Aristide could have been made Viscount instead of Dumar. It has to be the Keep.”

“You’re scaring me a little,” Hawke replies, grinning, but they do find the next note tucked behind the frame of Marlowe Dumar’s portrait in the Keep, the late Viscount staring down at them with his painted eye.

Before long they end up on the mezzanine of the Chantry, Hawke sitting up on his shoulders. “Just a little bit more,” she says in a strained whisper, fingers outstretched to reach the scrap of paper hanging from a censer overhead, while below them two Revered Mothers converse with the Grand Cleric. Fenris locks his knees and leans as far as possible above the marble banister, hands wrapped around her legs. Hawke makes another grab for it, then jerks back in fright with a strangled scream while the scrap of paper floats down before Elthina’s disapproving glower. Hawke’s startled yelp is still reverberating off the high-ceilinged walls while Sebastian shakes his head in disappointment as he escorts them out of the Chantry—then slips them the bill of lading that was hanging from the censer as they leave.

Their shadows stretch far before them in slants of dusty, ruddy light as they make their way to the docks. Fenris would call it all an egregious waste of time, but Hawke’s eyes are bright, her cheeks still flushed from embarrassment, and the space between them is supple and soft in a way it hasn’t been since the night he spent with her.

“Something,” Hawke starts as she pushes open the door of Smetty’s Fish Guttery, and Fenris groans, knowing what comes next, “smells _fishy_.”

Indeed it does. Fenris has to press his nose into the crook of his shoulder when the rank smell of rotten fish and brine hits them. “Let us not dawdle here,” he mutters, squinting to make out the numbers stenciled on the crates in the pale swaths of moonlight. The guttery is empty, the silence only broken by the click of Hawke’s low-heeled boots and the waves lapping at the nearby quays. He catches her looking out a window for a moment, moonbeams fanning out from between her fingers as she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. Then she turns, silhouette limned by the palest glow, and he knows the smile on her face though he cannot make it out in the dark.

“Over here,” Fenris says when he finds the crate numbered 1023. The wooden lid creaks and groans when he pries it off with a crowbar he finds leaning against the wall, and then it opens onto a square of darkness.

“Fenris,” Hawke drawls sweetly, folded over the edge of the crate to paw blindly at the bottom, “glow for me, please?”

“Make your own light,” he huffs in answer, but one of the shadows in the corner _moves_ , and Fenris is behind her in a lyrium-pale flash, elbow-deep inside a man’s chest.

“Thank y— _oh!_ ” Hawke exclaims, sounding suspiciously like she fell into the crate.

The wintry cast of his markings etch deep, frightened lines into the man’s face. “Who are you?” Fenris asks. “Who sent you?”

The bandit’s mouth falls open, but not a sound comes out. His pulse is wild against Fenris’s palm.

“Don’t hurt him,” another voice says in answer. A woman appears from around the corner, hands raised in peaceful overture. “We’ve got nothing against you. We were expecting someone else.”

Fenris tightens his hold just enough to wrench a cry of pain out of the man’s lips. “ _Who sent you?_ ” he repeats.

“She—she wouldn’t say her name,” he stutters, the whites of his eyes bright with the glow of his markings. He sounds younger than Fenris expected. Just a small-time thug, then. “Just told us to get Gamlen Amell— _unharmed_ —to the caverns outside the city. _Please_.”

Behind him, Hawke scrambles back up to her feet and steps over the side of the crate. “I think he’s saying the truth, Fen,” she says, and the guttery is once again plunged into darkness when Fenris releases him.

“Here, take this,” the bandit says, pressing a note into his hand before running off with his acolyte. “Bugger this entire thing.”

“Should’ve known it’d be a woman,” Hawke says behind him. She leans her chin over his shoulder to read the note as Fenris holds it up into a strip of silver light. “‘Bring Gamlen to the caverns where we first met,’” she reads. “He hardly seems worth the trouble, though.” With the words comes the brush of her hair on the taper of his ear, then a waft of something rich and delicate, like flowers soaked in cream, cut with the tang of her leathers—a welcome burst of sweetness through the gorge-rising smell of the guttery.

Warmth coils low inside the pit of his stomach. _Nothing stopping you now_ , Gamlen says from somewhere far away, the memory rising to his consciousness together with the plucked strings of a lute, the sweet burn of honey whiskey, and a whiff of perfumed silk. The slightest turn of his head would be enough to tilt his mouth against hers, Fenris realises.

His lips burn with the thought.

“Let us move on,” he says instead, then tucks the note into his belt.

* * *

Against all expectations, they do find the Gem of Keroshek, an acorn-sized jewel that doesn’t shine half as much as the eyes of the woman around whose neck it hangs. The light of an oil lamp skitters along its rough edges as she grants them a peek before tucking it back under the neckline of her bodice.

Hawke narrows her eyes at her. “You’re young enough to be Gamlen’s _daughter!_ ”

“Maybe because I _am_ his daughter,” she retorts, and Hawke’s face does something Fenris wouldn’t have thought possible. “I should’ve known he’d send you, Cousin.”

Hawke chuckles. “Well, to be fair, I sent myself. Which is a good thing, seeing as he’d probably have fallen off the Chantry mezzanine if those thugs in Darktown somehow hadn’t gotten to him first.”

“Those thugs in— _shit_. I’m sorry. That really didn’t go as I’d planned.”

“Speaking of whom,” Fenris says as a man stomps out of the shadows, wearing the same bared-teeth scowl as the hounds and bandits padding after him.

“What do you want, Veld?” sighs Gamlen’s daughter.

A string of light runs along the edge of his sword as Veld unsheathes it. “Hand over the gem, Charade,” he snarls.

She nocks an arrow in answer. “I think not.” The whitewood of her bow creaks as she pulls the string taut; Fenris draws his blade while magic starts crackling at Hawke’s fingertips.

“Let’s see what you can do, Cousin,” she laughs, hands glowing as she raises them overhead.

The high vault of the caves starts pulsing with bright flashes of light, and lightning comes screeching down in blinding forks when she drops her arms to her sides. The bandits scatter in jittery dances to avoid the arcs of lightning skipping at their feet. A few stumble about, momentarily blinded by the glaring light of the bolts, while others retreat, whistling for their hounds to follow them out of the caves. Charade’s arrows keep the rest of them confused, whizzing past their heads so that they never see Fenris coming until he is upon them.

A blow with the pommel or the flat of his sword is enough to send most of them running, their pathetic little lives not even worth the effort of ending them. But Veld is out for blood: he swoops down on him with mighty swings of his sword that quake down to his elbows each time their blades meet. Fenris has the advantage of speed, however. He hacks at Veld’s armour with blows powerful enough to deter a smarter man, but he keeps coming at him, something wild blazing at the bottom of his eyes.

 _Enough of this_. Veld lurches forward, his sword coming down onto empty air when Fenris steps outside himself to reappear behind him. Then he lifts his greatsword, pressing the balls of his feet into the cave floor—

His name tears through the air. Fenris whirls around as a hound lunges for his throat, and he just has time to lift his arm before gleaming, slavering teeth snap onto his wrist instead. He falls. The air whooshes out of his lungs when he hits the ground, pinned under the mabari’s hulking mass, and Hawke’s lightning magic explodes behind his eyelids when the back of his head strikes the stone floor. He attempts to pull his arm free, but the hound’s jaws are a vise, and his steel vambrace starts folding underneath to bite into his skin.

The dagger at his belt is stuck under the hound’s massive paw; Fenris fumbles for his greatsword instead, but Veld kicks it out of reach. “Say your prayers, knife-ear,” he gloats, clutching the grip of his sword.

Gouts of flame suddenly spout from his hands. He drops to his knees with a scream, sword clattering to the ground as he attempts to put out the fire licking its way up his arms. An arrow whistles, then sinks into the hound’s eye. Its jaws slacken as the beast slumps to the ground, and at last Fenris can squeeze himself out from underneath it. He scrambles up to his feet, gasping for breath.

Hawke approaches Veld, tsk-tsking at him. “You threaten my family, insult my friend …” She picks up his sword from the ground and rests the point against the hollow of his throat. “Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t just turn you into an ice statue like I did the Arishok.”

Fenris looks at her. She has called him “friend” before, easy as his name, and though he dismissed it then, now he knows the word is only ever uttered from her mouth when she means it, never taken in vain like she does the Maker’s name—just as she means it when she calls Charade “family”.

It’s a strange thing, watching it happen. Charade dovetails into her life as though there had always been a space carved out just for her, waiting to be filled. Fenris thinks of Varania, bonded to him through blood if not memories, and wonders if it could be that easy.

Veld’s mouth is a thin, hard line as he glares at Hawke. “You killed my brother, bitch,” he spits back. A shadow crosses her gaze at that. “You thought I’d let that go unanswered?”

“The fool came after us for a jewel we did not have,” Fenris replies, wincing as he tugs the dented metal off his forearm. Nothing but scratches underneath, luckily, but—

Hawke’s favour is gone from the vambrace. The knot must have come undone during the fight, and he spots the scarlet scarf snagged on the dead hound’s teeth, soaked in blood and dog slobber. Charade picks it off and hands it to him, though not before her gaze catches on the Amell crest that Hawke stitched on the corner.

“For what it’s worth, I’m sorry about your brother,” Hawke answers while Fenris tucks her favour into his belt before she can notice. “He didn’t exactly give us time to explain.”

Veld spits at her feet. “Shove it. Far as I’m concerned, Butcher of Lowtown shouldn’t have stopped with your mother.”

Her eyes darken. For a moment, Fenris expects her to run the blade through Veld’s throat, but she composes herself. “And this is where I lose all sympathy. You can run your mouth at the Captain of the Guard. Like talking to a wall, that one; I would know.”

“Well, that didn’t go exactly as planned,” Charade sighs as they come down the steps of the Keep. They delivered Veld to Aveline’s guardsmen, trussed up like a chicken and gagged with his own socks—a well-deserved punishment, Charade claimed, for what he’d put her cousin through. “I didn’t mean for you two to get dragged down in all this.”

“It’s quite alright,” Hawke says, stretching as she follows Charade down the stairs. At the other end of the city, the sky blushes with the pastel pinks and mauves of dawn. “We had a grand time, didn’t we, Fenris?”

“Delightful,” he replies.

“Don’t mind him; he had fun, I can tell,” Hawke says with a laugh. “Will you be seeing Gamlen? Does he even know about you?”

“I’m—not sure. My mother, Mara,” Charade starts, and Fenris’s ears perk up at the name, “left him before I was born. She worked all her life as a chambermaid for the Amells before he had to sell the estate. I don’t think she ever meant for me to know about him, but when she came down with the consumption, I just … had to know.”

“Do you know why she left him? Besides the obvious,” Hawke adds lightly.

It teases a chuckle out of her cousin. “She said he had a good heart once, but that sadness stole it away. He spent so much time and money chasing that Maker-damned gem I don’t think he even noticed she was gone.”

“I doubt that’s true,” Fenris says before he even realises it. If he knows anything about the man, it’s that Gamlen harbours a great many regrets. “Having family might be more worthwhile than you think.”

Charade smiles, and there’s something not too unlike Hawke’s own smile there at the corners of her mouth. “Hopefully he won’t be too disappointed that I didn’t turn out like the Champion of Kirkwall or the Hero of Ferelden. This family sets the bar pretty darned high.”

“The Hero of Ferelden was an Amell?” Fenris blurts out.

“Hm? Solona is our”—Hawke scrunches up her face—“second cousin? The daughter of Mother’s cousin Revka. So yes,” she concludes, and Fenris can only stare at her. The Solona from his dreams is an Amell. They _all_ are Amells. “Why?”

He shakes his head. “I hadn’t heard, that’s all,” he breathes.

“We’ve written, but I’m fairly sure half my letters never make it to Weisshaupt. I picture the Anderfels as this desolate land, empty but for the bodies of all the couriers who died of exposure on their way there. And I suppose the Wardens aren’t supposed to keep in touch with their family, anyway.”

Fenris snorts. “Those who don’t shirk their duty and run, no.”

“I have no idea who you could _possibly_ mean,” Hawke replies, grinning.

“You know, I’d heard rumours,” Charade starts with a bit of a wistful smile, “but I didn’t think the mighty Champion of Kirkwall would dare being with an elf openly. People still get so hung-up about that sort of thing. Even in Tantervale, my mother got so much grief about raising a human child in the alienage, and …” She trails off, noticing their shifty-eyed glances. “And you two aren’t actually together. Wow, I’m such an arse.”

His gaze drops to the dusty stones at their feet. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Hawke dart a look in his direction before clearing her throat. “We have … history,” she explains, then blinks. “ _Wait_. Your mother was elven?”

“I always thought that was part of the reason Gamlen never went after her, but … I don’t know anymore.” Charade sighs, then gives a shrug. “Sorry, I just couldn’t help noticing the”—she gestures to Fenris’s bare wrist—“the _thing_. My mother had one too. I never knew what it was until now.”

Fenris reluctantly pulls her favour out of his belt when Hawke throws him a confused look. “Oh, ended up as that dog’s chew toy, didn’t it? I suppose it was only a matter of time, what with you wearing it into battle and all,” she chides him, though not unkindly, before turning back to Charade. “Mother said it’s an Amell tradition. I wouldn’t have pegged Gamlen as the type, though. Real romantics, those Amells.”

“And the Hawkes aren’t? You had me fooled, there,” Charade retorts with a smirk. She stops as they reach the stairs leading to Lowtown. “I’m renting a room at the Hanged Man for the next week, if you care to visit.”

“Then you will certainly see Hawke again,” Fenris says.

Hawke laughs. “What can I say? The Hanged Man is like a favourite sweater. A smelly, itchy, moth-bitten sweater, mind you, that serves watered-down ale and sometimes tries to cop a feel when it thinks you’re not looking.” She grins at Charade. “You could also stay with me, you know. There’s space enough in that estate. And better wine.”

“I’ll consider it.” Charade smiles at them, morning light sweeping down the same chestnut curls as her mother. “Thank you, Cousin. And you too, Fenris.” Then she turns and starts down the stairs until she disappears out of view, her bowstring shining in the dawn like spun gold.

Hightown is stirring awake as they walk back to Hawke’s estate. Guards trade places at the gates of the imposing manors lining the streets, while servants draw the curtains open inside. A courier ambles down the sunlit cobblestones, and as morning sweeps down the market at the end of the street, it comes alive with the purples and oranges and greens of the proud cedars hedging the square and the draped canopies of the merchant stalls.

Hawke yawns, eyelids heavy. There is so much Fenris wants to tell her, but for the time being, he settles for this one thing: “I’m sorry about your favour, Hawke.”

She shakes her head and smiles, but as morning shines down upon her face he can see the heartache underneath as through glass. “Don’t be. I’d much rather it gets chewed up than you. It’s just a scrap of fabric, anyway.”

“It isn’t,” he breathes, thumbing the rumpled silk between his fingers.

Her gaze rests on him, as sure as the touch of her fingers long ago. “I can—I can try to fix it, if it means something to you. I might not do a very good job of it without Mother to help me, though,” she adds, and her voice hitches in her throat.

And it must mean something to him, because he hands it to her, even though it feels like relinquishing his greatsword or some other integral part of himself. Hawke holds it before her, running her thumb along the tear and the embroidered crest of the Amells on the corner.

When she raises her eyes again, they are brimming with tears.

Without quite knowing how, he finds her in his arms then, her face buried in the crook of his shoulder. The thunderstorm scent of her magic is still sticking to her skin, and he holds her tighter than he means to. “I’m sorry,” he says into her hair, because among all the words that hover at the edge of his lips, those are the only ones that are safe.

Her breath shudders against the taper of his ear. “It’s alright,” she answers in a strained whisper. “I get it now.”

Somehow, he manages to let her go. Her favour flutters after her as she walks under the arched gates of her estate.

* * *

He doesn’t dream of the Amells that night—or the next, or even the next one after that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know, I know, I cheated: Mara isn’t an Amell (at least not by blood), but her unborn baby was! And let’s be real, “Gamlen” doesn’t make for a very appealing chapter title, haha. I’m aware that “Mara Hartling” doesn’t sound like a city elf name, and the fact that she’s from a family of “traders of note” makes her unlikely to be elven, but since I don’t believe she’s outright stated to be human anywhere, you’ll have to pry this headcanon from my cold, dead fingers.
> 
> Whew, this was a long one! Thank you _so much_ for reading this! I hope you enjoyed this part, and I’d love to hear from you! I’m always open to concrit, so please let me know what you think! Feel free to find me on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/) as well. ♥


	4. Solona

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fenris now knows what has been causing his dreams of the Amell family, but instead of bringing him solace, it only reawakens some of the old ghosts still haunting him. At a loss for answers, he seeks help outside the city.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Argh, I’m so, so sorry for the long wait! This chapter took me way out of my comfort zone, and wrangling it into submission was very much a challenge. Many, many thanks to [sasskarian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sasskarian), [BlondePomeranian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondePomeranian), [MyrddinDerwydd](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MyrddinDerwydd) and [theherocomplex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/) for their invaluable help. ♥
> 
> Please note that this chapter contains graphic violence, death (including non-graphic animal death), slavery, and abuse (physical, psychological, and sexual). My [ask box](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/ask) is open if you have any questions! (Also, some of the Sabrae elves featured in this chapter actually die in the Act 2 quest Honoring the Fallen, but they deserved better so canon can go rot.)
> 
>   
>  And because I have the best friends, my dearest Sher had this wonderful, wonderful illustration for this story painted by the talented [Adri](http://antivancorvo.tumblr.com/). ♥ (Thank you both SO MUCH! I will never be over it.)
> 
> * * *
> 
> The answers quick and keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,—  
>  They are gone. They are gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curled  
>  Is the blossom. Fragrant is the blossom. I know. But I do not approve.  
>  More precious was the light in your eyes than all the roses in the world.
> 
> —Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Dirge Without Music”

Two years dead, yet Hadriana lives on in his dreams with such merciless clarity Fenris might as well still be in Tevinter, grovelling at her feet. “Clean this mess, slave,” she commands, but there is nothing to clean—though he does not dare say it—at least until she opens her hand around the stem of her wine glass.

It shatters against the floor, splashing the marble crimson.

“Beautiful,” someone says under their breath as Fenris starts picking up the glass shards. The iron-wrought chains and clasps of the saarebas collar bite across the lyrium etched into his skin, and its weight is such that he strains to keep his balance. “How did it not kill him?”

He relegates their conversation to a dark buzz at the edge of his awareness as he cleans up, but manages little more than wiping red arches across the marble. Dark rivulets ooze between the tiles and drip down his fingers to patter against the floor.

A hand comes to rest on his shoulder blade, and Fenris flinches despite himself. “Now, now, my pet,” his master says, breath hot on his ear. “Don’t be shy. Let them admire you.”

He has no choice but to let them touch the brands and stroke his hair, take his chin between two fingers to turn his head this way and that, stifle laughs as one brazen magister inquires just how _low_ the markings go. The searing heat of their breaths and fingertips slithers along their skin; someone’s tongue slides up the shell of his ear, wet and warm, and Fenris forces his face to remain blank over the pressing urge to pull away. His hands are full of broken glass.

No one seems to mind the red spill on the floor, even as it splashes at their feet to seep into their slippers and splatter the hem of their robes.

No one except Hadriana.

He would much rather face her anger than his master’s, but he will pay for disobeying her command, he knows, when she flashes her blue eyes at him and grabs him by the arm. “You don’t need to leave, Fenris,” she says, and it’s not Hadriana’s voice but it’s too late; he already has her pressed up against the wall, his hand clenched around her heart, and she gives one short gasp before crumbling into his arms, lifeless.

Fenris starts awake, his room awash in the pale, pulsing light of his brands. He kicks the damp tangle of sheets off his legs as the lyrium goes dormant again before stumbling through the dark to fiddle with the latch of the window, bile burning up his throat. A crisp, earthy breeze slips into the room, and he welcomes its cold touch on his sweaty, feverish skin. Beyond the droplets beading the glass panes, the overgrown garden glimmers in the haze of a peeking, pearlescent moon, leaves and branches shivering under the soft sigh of a drizzle.

No blood on his hand, of course, when his eyes adjust to the darkness: just the lyrium striating his hand like the veins of a leaf, gathering at his wrist where he wore Hawke’s favour for so long. He can still feel the slippery weight of her heart in his palm before it burst inside his fist, see the last gleam of blue fade between her lashes.

In the night, the scarlet silk is just an innocuous slash darker than the dark. Fenris has left it on the table where he found it earlier that day, folded around a note: _Almost as good as new_ , it read in the unmistakable, confident loops of Hawke’s hand. _Sorry I missed you_.

The ripped-out threads of the embroidered crest have been pulled back in, the worst of the stains cleaned, and the tears stitched back together, albeit unevenly. It even smells like her again, Summerday flowers masking the magic that thrums inside her fingertips, and Fenris chokes on a hot, bitter surge of anger at the memory of it. Hadriana is dead, and Danarius hasn’t shown himself in more than five years, but even with Tevinter half a world away, magic always dogs him, always taints him, and now the stain has even spread to his dreams. How can he be surprised, then, that Hawke too would claim some part of him for herself, given half a chance? How could he not see that her magic would come between them and fester?

And of course—of _course_ he only sees it far too late: he has gotten so used to the sticky-sweet smell of rot in his every breath that he only ever notices it once everything lies dead and wilted around him.

No longer. He will cut out the infection at the root if he must.

He is at the gates of Hawke’s estate as the crier calls the eighth hour. “Please, Messere,” Bodahn pants behind him, unable to keep up on his stubby legs, “at least let me announce you!”

“No need,” Fenris throws back at him from over his shoulder as he crosses the foyer. “I will announce myself.”

Isn’t that what Hawke has done since she first sat in his chair— _his_ chair, _his_ room, _his_ house—dropping by unannounced and sneaking into the old mansion even in his absence, leaving a trail of scattered notes and fragrant herbs in her wake to keep herself at the fore of his awareness?

He follows the trickle of laughter and clink of porcelain to the dining room, filled with seething purpose at the thought.

“Master Fenris,” Orana gasps when they wind up face to face in the doorway. Even through the anger still clawing at his ribcage, Fenris feels a twinge of guilt when she folds herself into a curtsey and sweeps out of his way in one swift motion—barging in like some cur out of the rain and terrorising Hawke’s household staff is not accomplishing much.

But the thought slips away as soon as he lays eyes on her. Haloed before the rain-battered panes, Hawke is drizzling honey on her bread, pale light skimming off the edges of her dressing gown. The smile slides off her face when she looks up at him; her gaze caroms to the plate of fruit and rolls as though she was about to offer him some, but then rules against it. “Please leave us, Orana,” she says, and the girl flies past him and out of the room like a draught. “Fenris? What’s wrong?”

Is anything _not?_ A bitter laugh dies somewhere in his chest. Hawke makes her way to him, unawares, sucking the honey off her fingertips, until she sees her favour crumpled in his fist. Dust motes ebb away from the strip of silk, the scarlet colour muted to an almost demure hue in the light that streams through the dripping windows. “Your favour,” he says, almost choking on the word; it tastes of rust, and ash, and _magic_ , and if he never has to taste it again it will not be soon enough. “What did you say it was again? An Amell tradition of some sort?”

“So Mother told me. A token of … I don’t know, friendship, I suppose. It doesn’t have to mean anything,” she says, fiddling with the hem of her sleeve. “Is there anything wrong with it?”

“You tell me,” he retorts.

After a moment of hesitation, she reaches for the favour, careful not to let their fingers touch, then unfolds it before her. Her eyes flit from one snag to the other, as though the answer was somehow drawn through the warp threads; at last they return to his face, uncomprehending under the furrow of her brow. “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to. You don’t even have to keep it, I promise.” Anyone else might have missed the strain beneath the assumed nonchalance, but his ears have long learned to listen for the slightest portent of peril in someone’s voice.

She hands it back to him, but he dares not touch it again. Not now that he knows about the magic infusing it, deliberate or not. If it has the power to stir his dreams towards her, how can he know that his waking thoughts have not been so addled as well?

To think that he _wore_ it on his person for two years—he feels unclean. Tainted. Even more so than before.

Hawke drops her hand back to her side. Behind her, the rain patters against the tall arched windows of the dining room. “Talk to me, Fenris. I’m a mage, not a mindreader.”

The words loll at the tip of his tongue for a time before he can bring himself to speak them. “Ever since we … ever since that night,” he manages, glancing at her face just long enough to see the ruddy colour riding high on her cheeks, “I’ve been having dreams.”

He can _hear_ the way her mouth curls. “Oh? The good kind, I hope?”

Just once—just _this_ once—he had hoped she would not deride him, but he should have known better. “Is it too much to ask for you not to make light of everything for once?!” _Good,_ he thinks, reveling in the wide-eyed shock on her face when she flinches at his words. Let her be scared of him. Let her remember he is not to be trifled with. “We would not be having this conversation if they were the good kind, and you _know_ it.”

“Sorry. Sorry, I didn’t mean anything by it.” She tugs her dressing gown closed over her chemise and wraps her arms around herself. “What kind of dreams?”

He whirls away from her, unable to stand the way she keeps staring at him. His own gaze skips from the brass candelabrum to the toes of her satin slippers as he paces the length of the dining room. “I’ve been having dreams about the Amell family,” he says at last, face turned away from her. Somewhere behind his shoulder, her breath catches in her throat. “Not just dreams, but visions of the past, as far as I can tell. Things that turn out to have happened but that I have no way of knowing.”

“The _Amells?_ ” Hawke chokes out after opening and closing her mouth a few times. “Who do you mean? My uncle? My _mother?_ ”

“Sometimes,” he admits, running a hand through his sodden hair. “Others you’ve never met. I made some inquiries, and everything turned out to be true.”

“‘Everything turned out to be true’? Fenris, I don’t understand what you’re saying. How can that be possible?”

Her voice is taut, almost shrill. Somehow, it only infuriates him even more. “You forget that _this_ ”—he snatches the strip of silk out of her hand and brandishes it in his fist—“caused them in the first place. What is it, _truly_? A binding of some sort? A charm? A spell?”

His arm trembles despite himself; Hawke stares at the shivering length of silk, eyes wide. “I don’t—I don’t _know_. You know damn well I’d never—you _know_ that, right?”

“Do I? You _know_ what has been done to me,” he starts, then stops himself. “No. You know, but you do not understand. How could you understand what it means to be a slave? How could a _mage_ understand what it means to have magic forced on you when you are cursed with it to begin with?”

The colour drains right out of her face at that. “Fenris, I’m not—I’m not _them_. I didn’t choose to be a mage, but I can at least choose how to use my magic!”

“Then what is it if not magic?!”

The high-ceilinged room tosses the sound of his voice back at them with all the fierce, furious bravado of a cornered animal. Hawke’s entire body snaps tight as a whipcord. Her eyes look impossibly huge in the middle of her pale face, something burning at the bottom of her blown pupils, black ringed with blue. “It’s not _anything!_ It’s just some silly little thing I made because I was too stupidly in love with you to realise you’d just see it as one more chain to break,” she blazes, and the blood returns to her cheeks all at once with the words, bitter, ugly things that twist between her teeth. “You really think I would’ve used magic to—to what? To make you dream of my family? To make you _love_ me?” A mirthless laugh jolts out of her at that, the way blood spurts out of a wound, and the bitterness in it strikes Fenris in his heart, a vague sense of bile climbing the back of his throat. “You left me, Fenris. _You left me_ , and Maker help me if it doesn’t bloody hurt to see you walk around with this _fucking thing_ ”—she jabs one finger at the favour—“like one day you might change your mind, but you won’t, will you? Not after accusing me of blood magic because that’s what this is all about, right?”

Somewhere in the rain, the Chantry bells toll through Hightown with all the solemn, mournful finality of regret. Hawke’s shoulders slump. “Are you so desperate not to feel anything for me you’d rather think of me as a witch?” she says, barely above a whisper.

His arm drops back to his side, and his gaze, to the scarf in his hand. He knew, of course, that he hurt her, but until now he never once thought of what made that possible: she loves him, or once did, at least, and standing in front of her now he knows little more, all his stone-hard certainty crumbling like cliffs into the sea.

The silence stretches, until the blue waters of her eyes harden like the surface of a lake in winter. “This was a mistake,” she announces, then seizes the scarf with one hand before making for the hearth.

It almost slips out of his grasp, but his fingers tighten around it of their own accord. Hawke’s steps carry her for another step or two until she has to stop, swiveling around to glare at him. Her eyes are alight as though she were burning on the inside, her chest heaving with short, sharp breaths. For a moment the two of them stand still, face to face, the favour stretched taut between them like a yoke.

Hawke lets go first. “Do with it as you will,” she hisses, then turns on her heel, heading for the door.

Her name is stuck at the back of his throat. He should call her back, he knows, but then the moment is gone, and she with it.

* * *

Fenris needs out.

He knows well what will happen if he leaves Kirkwall for too long, but he needs out of Kirkwall, out of Hawke’s shadow, out of his own _skin._ She has claimed for herself whatever was left unmarked by Danarius’s hand, and though he cannot hope to escape the ubiquitous song of the Champion, he walks with the city at his back, carrying that wretched skin of his and all of its stains with him.

Far at the end of the road, Sundermount climbs high into the haze blanketing the Vimmarks, its peak lost amidst swaths of white mists. The rain drones with cool, patient indifference, unhurried droplets sneaking into his collar and his gauntlets. When the paved highway forks into dirt roads, Fenris finds himself trudging along rainwater-filled caravan ruts that crumble under his feet. Few travelers have chosen the road over an inn’s cozy, warm hearth. Even Kirkwall’s apparently endless throngs of bandits have opted to stay dry.

It’s just him, then, walking the ribbon of sluiced, dark earth that winds up the base of the mountain. Just him and his sword, and he could not ask for better company. If he cuts himself on the edge, he only has himself to blame.

It is another hour before the Dalish encampment comes into sight. Fenris allows himself a moment of respite in the shelter of a mountain ridge, crowned by towering pine trees: he sits down on a rock, pushes his wet hair out of his face, and waits for the ache to leach out of the soles of his feet. The air is clear, almost sharp after all the smells of the city. Stalks of grass and clusters of small, white flowers droop between the rain-slick pebbles of the path before him; the waxed banners of the Sabrae Clan flap in the wind at the end of it, glimmering under the light of what has to be mage fire to keep burning through all this rain. The scarlet sails of the aravels shine bright as garnets in the swirling haze further down the path, the same colour as …

Fenris sighs, taking Hawke’s favour out of his belt. Rainwater drips down between the boughs high above, and the scarf turns a shade or two darker where it seeps into the fabric. He could bury it here, let it rot within the cursed land of the mountain. He could even ask the Dalish to burn it for him and scatter its wretched magic to the winds. But he does no such thing, and before long the favour hangs limp and crimson from his hand.

The wind rises; the pines sway in its howl, droplets falling off the branches to patter against the metal of his armour. He shivers. Night will fall soon, and—

His markings come alive. An arrow has whizzed before his eyes with a flash of mottled fletching, and Fenris finds himself at the end of the path between one heartbeat and the next, clutching the throat of a Dalish hunter.

“Sorry,” she tries, a smile frozen on her face. Her eyes flit to his hand, then back at his face, then at something behind him. “I was aiming at that fennec next to you. Couldn’t warn you without scaring it off.”

Another fennec and a couple of squirrels hang from her belt; behind him, the feather fletching of her arrow marks what looks like a small mound of wet fur.

He unclasps his hand. “I could have killed you.”

“You were all the way over _there!_ ” she retorts, rubbing her neck with a wince. “How’d you even _do_ that?”

“A story for another time, perhaps,” he sighs.

To her credit, she does not insist. Instead she slings her bow over her shoulder, then starts up the path towards her kill. “You’re that shem’s flat-ear friend, aren’t you?”

Short of leaving the Free Marches altogether, he will never be anything else. “Close enough. My name is Fenris.”

“Radha. Sorry, habits, I guess.” She glances up at him while she cuts her arrow out of the fennec’s neck. In the dimming light of the afternoon, the blood looks black on its tawny fur. “Did anything happen to Merrill? Is that why you’re here?”

“Merrill is fine.” Or so he assumes, anyway. She has not yet unleashed demons and fiends upon Lowtown, in any event. “I’m here on business of my own. I wish to speak with your Keeper.”

“Oh,” Radha says. If she is at all relieved, he cannot say. She fastens the fennec’s limp body to her belt with her other kills, then tilts her head to the side, studying him. “Do you often do that?”

“Do what?”

She gives a shrug, then gestures towards the rock where he was seated a moment ago. “Sit on your own, brooding in the rain?”

“I wasn’t—” He sighs. Radha is biting her bottom lip, eyes twinkling. “Will you take me to Marethari or not?”

Rain drips down her chin and the tip of her nose when she bursts out laughing. “Only because you’re friends with Merrill,” she throws over her shoulder as she leads the way to the Dalish encampment, “otherwise I’d stick an arrow right into that handsome face of yours.”

Hawke’s deeds—and the grace of them—have not faded from the Sabrae Clan. Marethari takes one look at Fenris and stuffs him into one of the larger landships despite his protests. Defeated, he accepts a steaming bowl of tea and a woolen blanket to wrap around himself, though not without guilt: whatever tied him and Hawke together is now tattered to its bare threads, and he feels like he is trespassing by pretending otherwise; but the aravel is warm, fragrant with cedar and dried embrium blooms, and something simmering on the small stove makes his mouth water.

“After all that Hawke has done for us, it would be remiss of me not to treat you as a friend,” Marethari says. “I trust that she and Merrill are well?”

“As ever,” he answers, staring into his tea. _Cloves, bergamot rind, and elfroot to ward off the chill,_ Marethari explained. His fingertips tingle with the gentle heat rolling off the bowl in his cupped hands, and even that feels like a transgression, the theft of some kindness that should have gone to someone worthy of it. He brings the tea to his lips but tastes nothing.

Marethari lights up a cluster of candles with a well-practiced flick of her wrist, then settles on the floor cushion in front of him. “And what brings you here, da’len?”

Fenris breathes in the sweet, velvety steam, then lets the outside world—the rain rattling pine needles, the rhythmic thud of an axe against wood, Radha’s hushed conversation with another member of the clan—slough away. Then he sets his bowl next to the sheaf of papers on the low table, curves of ancient elvish swooping down the sheets, and hands Marethari the bedraggled scarf. “I thought … I was hoping you could tell me whether it is a magical binding or compulsion of some kind,” he says, hoping his voice sounds less wavering than it does to his own ears.

Marethari holds it up in front of her for a moment, pinched between two fingers, then runs one hand over the fabric. Magic pulses once from her palm; inquisitive little sparks skip along the weft, twisting and spinning around the scarlet strands, before melting into the rain-soaked silk. Her mouth quirks, and she seems to examine the scarf thread by thread, mirth still hanging at the corners of her lips.

At last she folds the scarf in half, and smoothes it down on the table between them. The silk wears its web of wrinkles and tears like battle scars. “What do _you_ believe it is?” Marethari asks at last.

“What does it matter?” he retorts, but his impatience is only met with a motherly smile.

“When it comes to magic, not much else does.”

Something wound taut inside him snaps and collapses, and the sudden drop could almost be relief, like the great gaping chasm was always there at his feet and at last he can stop worrying about the fall. “So it _is_ magic, then.”

“It needs not be as dreadful as you make it sound,” she answers in that warm, well-worn voice of hers. “What do you think magic is?”

 _Power,_ he wants to say, headier than ambrosia, the all-consuming, insatiable beast that lurks in the hearts of men and gluts itself with their triumphs over others. But he has come to the Keeper _because_ of her magic, not in spite of it, so instead he grasps for something safer. “The ability to interact with the Fade and draw power from it,” he answers as though by rote.

“You do not believe a single word of that. Well, perhaps _one_ ,” she amends with a knowing look. Her gaze is gentle under the golden swirls of her vallaslin, but Fenris cannot shake the feeling that she sees much more than she ought. “Magic is a thought made real. Magic is a wish come true. It is possibility. It is _infinity,_ and there is little more terrifying than that.”

Before he can even think of something to say to that, Marethari reaches across the scarlet scarf spread between them to take one of his hands in hers; he expects them to be soft, but they are calloused and strong, and her grip, surprisingly firm. She turns his hand over in the light of the dying day, watching how his brands gleam like strands of spider silk. “This is lyrium, is it not?”

Fenris feels a small, shameful wash of relief when she lets go. “Branded into my flesh by my former master, yes,” he answers, dropping both hands safely into his lap.

Something flits across her eyes, swift and terrible, and it sends his pulse running in his throat like a glimpse of a preying animal between the trees, but it is gone before he can name it. “Lyrium is as a rock in a stream: steady, immutable, warping the flow of both water and air around itself; but everything else is as a slant of sunlight,” she continues between sips of tea. “That same ray of sun may exist both in the water and out, but the surface will alter its light as it passes through. Make it appear muted, perhaps, or even distorted. Do you understand?”

It is all he can do to keep the annoyance from seeping into his voice. “The water in this analogy is the Fade, I presume?”

“I would argue that the waking world is underwater,” she answers, and the idea is so preposterous he has to bite back a bark of laughter. “There are no secrets in the Beyond. One’s heart of hearts is laid bare, the hidden, unconscious desires and foolish little hopes all there in the open, alongside the darkest fears and brightest joys. And a mage’s love—now _that_ is a powerful thing.”

Anger’s familiar, fiery fingers grapple his throat. “What are you saying? That”—he swallows Hawke’s name just in time, and it burns on its way down—“ _love_ is the reason this thing has been giving me dreams for years? Dreams of people dying and of things that were never meant for me to know—and I should be—what? _Flattered?_ ”

“Hawke did not bind you to herself, if that is your fear,” she says, and another burning lance arcs through him at the mention of her name. “But perhaps the lyrium knows things that you do not. Perhaps those dreams are the answer, not the question.”

“Make this quick, Keeper. I have no patience left for riddles.”

Marethari holds his gaze as she might a sullen toddler’s; steam plumes from the bowl and fogs up her wide, unblinking eyes. “Very well. It is said that the prophet Andraste sojourned alone on Sundermount for three days, and that during this time, the world was revealed to her as though in a mirror. Perhaps the mountain’s vantage will give you the perspective that you need.”

Fenris blinks. She is testing him, he thinks, or having some petty, private revenge for his brusque manner, but she says it as though there had never been space in the world for anything other than the truth, as if scaling a peak in search of enlightenment was the only path open before him.

And perhaps it is, to the Dalish. “I thought Sundermount was a fearsome place of untold horrors.”

“Many would call the truth of their heart such,” she says, smiling, and he drops his gaze, somehow ashamed. “Sundermount is halfway in the Beyond, rife with the traces of old magic. And sometimes the echo returns clearer than the call itself. The choice is yours, da’len. Mythal’enaste.”

She unfolds herself in one swift movement that belies her age, then leaves him to seethe on his own. Fenris has clashed enough with First Enchanter Orsino during their brief encounters that begging him for favours was out of the question, while despite their differences, Marethari struck him as reasonable in her dealings with Hawke: she stood up against Merrill’s blood magic, after all, and had been willing to make Feynriel Tranquil if it came down to it.

He should have known not to expect anything other than nonsense from the Dalish, however. What a waste of his time.

“I hope you don’t intend to sneak away just yet,” Radha says when he steps out of the aravel. Fenris finds her sitting on a rudimentary bench made of a tree bole sawed down the length. “You helped me catch it, after all,” she adds, holding up the headless, half-skinned fennec in her hands.

The rain has let up for now, and night has fallen in its stead. The nearby trees and crags gleam in the light of roaring fires, sparks swirling up into the evening sky. The Sabrae hunters are hard at work, skinning and cleaning the day’s kills. Some of the animals are mounted on spits for the evening meal, while others are cut into thin strips of meat and set to smoke over hot coals.

But Fenris has no intention of lingering, no matter how inviting the aroma. “I fail to see how I helped,” he answers.

Radha gives the hide a tug, peeling it off the fennec’s pink body. “Wouldn’t have spotted it if you hadn’t been sitting there brooding right next to it.”

He sighs. “I was _not_ —”

“Who’s your friend, Radha?” another hunter asks as he approaches, a touch of amusement in his voice.

“Junar, this is Fenris. He’s friends with Merrill.”

“‘Friends’ might be pushing it,” Fenris amends.

“If you’re wise, you’ll stay far away from her,” says another elf by the name of Fenarel. “No sane person will touch what she’s taken up.”

Fenris likes him, he decides. “No need to tell me twice.”

“Oh! You could join our clan,” Radha exclaims.

Fenarel scoffs. “Come on, Radha. You can’t just invite anyone to join the clan.”

“Well, we took Pol in, didn’t we? And trust me, he can hold his own in a fight,” she adds, pointing her knife in Fenris’s direction before slicing the fennec’s belly open. “Bet the shemlen would leave us alone if we had him standing guard.”

“Wouldn’t _you_ like him to join us,” Junar says, smirking. “What’s with you and flat-ears, anyway?”

“Slim pickings, otherwise,” she retorts, brandishing a fistful of guts at the two Dalish men when they burst out in protest. Even Fenris has to stifle a laugh.

One of the clan elders comes to goad them back into work, and his last chance of escape slips away when he ends up with a knife in one hand and a dead squirrel in the other. “I don’t know how it’s done in shem cities,” Junar explains, “but among the Dalish, even guests lend a hand. Come, I’ll show you how to clean it.”

The fennecs and squirrels are spit-roasted over hot coals, then served with heart-shaped leaves of elfroot, mushrooms and pine nuts. Despite its rusticity, it is the best meal Fenris has had in ages, perhaps with the exception of Orana’s cooking. Then everyone sits around the fire with a cup of dandelion wine, and Hahren Paivel starts telling tales of the twin gods: Falon’Din, who once carried a dying deer to rest beyond the Veil, and Dirthamen, who then learned to walk the shifting paths of the Fade in search of his brother.

Fenris lets his thoughts drift in the storyteller’s warm voice. Instead he thinks of—Varania, somehow, and the little witch in the alienage, and were it not for the food and wine dulling the edge of his thoughts, he would be furious now that he knows just what she gave up for her fool’s errand.

“Radha’s right,” Junar says, sitting down next to him a little too close. “You’re not so bad after all.”

Fenris snorts. “Flat ears and all?”

The hunter blushes so hard he almost glows in the firelight. “Your ears are fine,” he says, then clears his throat. “As—as is the rest of you.”

Junar has a kind face and the strong, slender hands of an archer, and it might have been a fine proposition were it not for Hawke’s favour, balled and shoved into his belt. “There’s … someone else,” he answers, and it feels like a lie, but she has left no space inside him for even dalliances. “I’m sorry.”

“Oh. Of course. I didn’t mean anything by it,” Junar says. He then blathers on about the food and the wine for a minute or two before excusing himself.

Fenris retires soon after, too. It seems that the Sabrae Clan has suffered some losses over the years, and not just Merrill’s: he has one of the smaller aravels all to himself, where he undresses before slipping under a bear hide. Someone produces a flute, and some of the younger elves burst into drunken song until Master Ilen scatters them.

Voices turn to whispers, then whispers to silence. Hawke’s favour smells of rain and dirt now, the soft rustle of the crumpled silk almost lost to the million tiny noises of the woods: the calls of birds and insects, the crackle of leaves and branches under furtive paws, the wind whispering to the trees. If only he too, like Dirthamen, could subdue the ravens Fear and Deceit to learn the secrets of dreams, to retrace at will the paths that lie beyond the Veil …

When at last Fenris drifts off to sleep, he dreams of the Archdemon’s neck snapping like a whip before its thorny head hits the ground.

Solona Amell crumbles to her knees. If the blood lapping at her fingertips wasn’t the black, steaming ichor of the darkspawn, it could have been from the gaping hole in her chest, where her heart used to be.

The dark runnels streaming down the flagstones of Fort Drakon drink her tears, greedy even in death.

* * *

Fenris wakes with the dawn. The tree trunks are wreathed with white mists, and the frilly ferns, beaded with dew. Some of the Sabrae hunters are up, breaking fast with fruit and flat bread; Master Ilen is already at work, freeing up a bow out of some curved piece of wood with his carving knife.

Keeper Marethari has a bedroll and some provisions ready for him. Fenris arches one eyebrow. “What makes you think I’m climbing the mountain?”

She smiles. “You would have left already otherwise, da’len,” she replies, and Fenris, defeated, thanks her as he slings the bedroll over his shoulder. “May you find what you seek. Dareth shiral.”

At that he embarks on the most foolish, the most _Dalish_ endeavour of his ludicrous existence, and starts the slow climb up the mountain path. Sundermount is quiet: he hears no birds roosting in the pines, no animals scampering away in the fog—even his own footfalls do not quite reach his ears, but he is not fool enough to trust that he is alone. No one is ever alone on Sundermount.

The sun must be climbing along with him somewhere behind the clouds, but the day is shiftless, indolent, and Fenris has an impression of receding darkness rather than light. In the distance, the ridges of the Vimmarks slice through the lingering mists, and down the cliff, the sails of the aravels look like a fresh splatter of blood. He has not been here often, and never without Hawke, but the winding twists and turns of the path are never the same from one time to the next, too tortuous, too sinuous for even the fleeting immutability of one’s man memory. It is only when he sees the half-circle of standing stones along the edge of the cliff, guarding Mythal’s altar against the wind, that he has some recollection of having been here before.

Someone has been here not long before him: wildflowers, not yet wilted, and coins have been strewn about the blue flame of the All-Mother, flanked with precarious towers of stone and burnt incense sticks. Here they met Asha’bellanar—or _Flemeth_ , as Hawke called her—and the mere memory of her name is enough to raise the hair on the nape of his neck.

_The chains are broken, but are you truly free?_

Anger rose up his throat at her words, so thick he could have choked on it. Of _course_ he was free: his freedom had been paid for in blood, bought with more lives than his own is worth, he had _better_ be free. But the witch’s amber, all-knowing eye had seen through him as through glass. Once he thought he loved Danarius—and he _had_ , as sickening as the thought is now; likewise, could whatever he felt for Hawke have been planted inside him, taking roots in the pit of his stomach and infesting his heart and head like weeds?

Could he have been wrong to think himself free all this time?

A brisk wind tugs at the pale flames on the altar, and with it comes the bitter scent of burning oleander and the same metallic tang as his markings after a long battle, when the pain is at its worst. The smell strikes like a warning, sudden and sharp. When they were here last, Merrill recited a prayer to Mythal and cautioned them against angering the Mother of the Creators, but even with the oppressive weight of Sundermount at his back, Fenris cannot bring himself to worship at the altar of a goddess he does not believe in.

Strange how much easier it is to tell what he does not believe than what he does. Every time he comes close to believing in the Maker, he reminds himself he wants nothing to do with a god who lets what happened to him happen to his creations. Sometimes he can even find some measure of comfort in the thought that all have been abandoned by their gods, whichever those might be, that people’s fates lie in their own hands—that no one but himself can walk the path before him.

And yet other times, he feels so utterly and breakingly alone he cannot tell if whatever lies at the end of the road is even worth the walk. It is tempting, then, to believe that something fills all that empty space around and inside him.

In any event, it seems to him that Mythal— _if_ she exists—should take greater offence at a false, self-serving offering than none at all, so Fenris turns his back to the altar and continues up the path, navigating narrow ledges and mossy crags until he reaches the system of caves dug into the mountain by the Ancients.

When at last he emerges again, the burnished light of a setting sun fans out from between the pine trees. He reaches the top of the mountain just in time to see it stretch into a thin line on the horizon, setting the Waking Sea alight, before sinking beneath the waves. The Veil is thin here, a mere gossamer flutter on his markings, and the very air seems to curl and twist on itself, like the mirages that shimmer on the highways out of Minrathous in the dog days of summer. Never has Fenris been more aware that the threadbare sheet of the Veil is all that separates him from whatever lurks on the other side.

It should be quiet enough to hear the grubs burrowing under the cracked bark of the pines, but he hears nothing past his own breathing. After the long climb and the many fights against cave-dwelling spiders, his entire body aches, begging for a rest, but there is work yet to be done before darkness falls. He finds the remains of a fire inside a stone ring, gathers some dead twigs, and sets himself to the task of igniting the fatwood shavings Master Ilen gave him. After a light dinner of smoked venison and dried currant, he spreads out his bedroll under the cover of an ancient, gnarled pine and lies back. Fenris is still unconvinced the Dalish are not just having a laugh at the flat-ear’s expense, but he is too exhausted now to do anything but wait for sleep to claim him.

If not for the stars spangling the night, he couldn’t tell where earth ends and sky begins: everything is black but for Satina’s bright sickle edging up to the constellations. He recognises the downturned sword of Judex at once, then the strange flower shape of Bellitanus. He only knows their names in Tevene, he realises, and resolves to learn them in Common once he returns to the city.

Not too long ago he would have asked Hawke without a second thought, but now …

Fenris blows out a deep, slow breath, and stops fighting her. The memories of the Fade are so dense here, so close, that time loses all meaning. The pines are not ancient so much as _ageless_ : they have stood watch over countless battles, keep the secrets of aeons of visitors trapped inside their boughs, in the near-still flow of resin. Here they stand as they always have and always will, timeless, and deathless, and lifeless. And with those mute sentinels for sole witnesses, Hawke’s favour threaded between his fingers, Fenris allows himself to miss her. To _yearn_ for her. And this simple truth is the spool by which he unravels, coming undone while Hawke seeps between the seams, and in his memories the distance between them is no more than the space where his blood would beat against her favour.

That night … he remembers as though it were yesterday. Hawke’s touch, Hawke’s lips, Hawke’s body curving into his like a bow. The choked cry she let out as she shuddered between his arms, and when he followed her down the cresting height of their embrace, the blinding, brilliant flood of memories behind his eyelids, the indescribable lightness of being whole—of being _home_.

That, of course, still eludes him. _Remember_ , he sometimes commands himself. _Remember_ , but it is futile—all his memories spilled when Hawke loosened her embrace, there and then gone, as irrevocably lost as he had wanted to lose himself in the combined heat of their bodies.

And then he ran, the coward. As always.

By the time their breath evened out again, he was already gone, but she didn’t know it. Instead she belted her robe, shook her hair out of the collar as she slid a drawer open, and sat on the edge of the bed, the square of silk folded between her hands.

“It’s an Amell tradition,” she said, still flushed, a slight tremble to her fingers. “A favour for the one you—you’ve grown fond of.”

This time, Fenris stays.

He stretches his arm out to her, and she loops the favour around his wrist herself. The silk slips off his skin like running water, but she gives the ends a tug and manages to fasten them into a tight knot.

The scarf is a deep crimson colour in the light of the hearth and sconces. “I am not leaving this time,” he says.

“I know. I won’t let you,” Hawke replies with a teasing lilt before sitting down at her dressing table. Her reflection smiles at him, golden in the light of the taper candles flanking the mirror, even more so than the wreathed vines of the gilt frame. “It might even be fun to hold over your head once in a while,” she adds lightly, but his stomach tightens when the smile slides off her face. “I need to know why you left, Fenris.”

His eyes drift to the coffered ceiling, while he fiddles with the favour around his wrist. “It was … too much,” he starts, picking at the knot. “Remembering my past one moment, only to forget it all the next … How could I be what you deserved? I couldn’t. So I ran.”

Hawke watches him for a moment, then picks up her hairbrush, runs it through her hair once, and stops. “Are you sorry?” she asks.

Fenris winces; the scarf bites into the lyrium etched along the bones of his wrist when he attempts to run a finger under the silk to loosen it, and a fork of pain crackles up the brands twisting up his arm. “What?”

Even through the mirror, her gaze is a tangible weight pressing down on him, as heavy as those long hours spent in her room, waiting for her to wake. “I want to know you’re sorry. I need to hear you say it.”

The candlelight sweeps down her smooth dark hair as she starts brushing it. Her movements are slow and deliberate, and her face, devoid of anger, but displeasure runs through her voice like a chill. With his fault laid bare before him now, the apology he rehearsed a thousand times over is scattered to oblivion. “Of course I’m sorry, Hawke,” he tries, and the words sound so—insufficient, so _small_ for the depth of what they encompass that he wishes he had kept quiet instead.

Her eyebrows arch up. “Tut-tut. What did you call me?”

What _did_ he call her? What is she if not—Hawke?

He looks at the mirror. Her face itself is vermeil, candlelit and gold, a mask wrought to show nothing but what she wills: the unspoken promise of either punishment or reward hinging on his next few words. How insignificant his own reflection must look in her mirror, he realises. Of course her name would be too sacred, too hallowed to be fouled by his mouth, dirtied by mere mortal lips.

His wrist burns. Looking down, he sees—not silk dyed scarlet, but rope burns, and skin bruised and bitten raw by shackles.

 _Know your place, slave_.

He swallows. “I apologise, Domina.”

“Better.” Another smile stretches her lips, but it gleams as a sharpened blade this time, and Fenris would do anything to keep it there on her face where he can see it, where it will not be used as a weapon against him. “Come here, pet,” she says, patting her thigh.

His body obeys of its own accord; he crawls out of her bed, naked save for the collar welting the skin of his neck, and stumbles to her feet when she gives his chain tug. Another jerk of her arm forces his head up, but he dares not look at her face without permission, so he lets his gaze stray to the lattice window behind her.

“My sweet Fenris, you’ve disappointed me much. I thought you’d come back to me. I thought you _loved_ me,” she says, a vein of iron hiding under the pleading note in her voice. “Don’t you love me?”

“Yes, Domina,” he answers, willing away the cold bite of the tessellated marble tiles under his hands and knees. Outside the window, a branch bobs up and down in the breeze, heavy with ripe, brilliant mandarins and glossy green leaves, but even their fragrance cannot mask the coppery scent of blood that rolls down the halls, thick as fog.

Her red mouth twists into a pout. “I don’t believe you. Why would you leave if you did?”

Fenris scrambles for an answer, but there is none. He should never have left, only that much is certain. “I was scared,” he answers, truthfully.

“Scared of _me?_ But you know you have nothing to fear from me as long as you don’t disappoint me. What made you return?”

The answer is hooked somewhere deep inside him, and he has to tear it out of his stomach and his chest and his throat before it can breach his lips. “Because being away from you was worse,” he says, then at the risk of overstepping his bounds, adds, “I apologise, Domina. It will not happen again.”

She takes his chin between two fingers, humming as she moves his head to one side, then the other, as though she hoped that the candlelight would reveal something if it hit his face just so. Fenris can taste his own pulse on the roof of his mouth. Whispers and footfalls sneak past the door; a whip cracks somewhere in the courtyard, and a woman’s choked sob echoes through the stifling late summer heat.

Hawke drops the chain to the floor, and he starts at the clatter, his entire body turning rigid as stone. “See, these are just _words,_ ” she says at last, reaching for one of the filigreed tapersticks by the mirror, and holds it down in front of him. “Show me how much you missed me. Show me how much it hurt.”

Fenris stares into the shivering candle flame. A thin plume of smoke rises from its end, undulating with each one of her breaths. All that reflects the candlelight are the too-many teeth in that crimson mouth of hers; they gleam expectantly, like an unblooded blade waiting for its first taste of flesh. Her eyes are darkness.

He brought this upon himself. If he had not left …

His breath shudders between his teeth. Then he stretches out his hand, trying to master its tremble. The air before him shimmers with the heat rising from the flame, and the first wisp of smoke curls against his palm, graceful as a feather.

It is bearable for the span of a breath, too fleeting to be anything but cruel; then agony starts eating its way through his hand, ruthless and ravenous. Fenris swallows back the cries and moans that rise up his throat. This is nothing compared to the anguish he caused his mistress, he tells himself, so he lets the pain carry him away and fling him about like a handful of ashes in the wind, because he _loves_ his mistress, he loves her and how else can he prove it? So he endures, while little by little the rest of the world sloughs away from the blistered hole burning into his palm. He keeps his hand over the flame, until he cannot breathe, cannot even feel his fingernails scratching at the floor, until his vision melts away with the flesh of his hand—

Hawke removes the flame. Fenris slumps at her feet, but the damage done to his hand is too severe for anything resembling relief. His awareness has shrunk to the weeping hole in the middle of his palm, and he is only dimly aware of the shuddering sobs wracking his body as he cradles his hand to his chest.

A choked cry escapes his mouth when she grabs his wrist and holds his upturned palm into her lap. “Ouch, that _really_ must hurt,” she says with an appreciative whistle. Fenris opens his mouth to answer, but finds himself gagging instead. “Well?” she presses him, digging her long nails into the crook of his elbow and dragging them up his forearm. Long scarlet strings burn in their wake, beads of blood glistening along the lyrium brands. “Does it hurt?”

Her talons claw at the raw skin of his wrist, wrenching another cry out of him, then tease the unburned flesh around the charred edges of his palm. “Yes, Domina,” he chokes out.

“Do you want the pain to stop?”

The words spill out of his mouth of their own will, as they have so many times before—practiced, familiar, _safe_. “Yes, Domina.”

“What’s the magic word?” she singsongs, then giggles to herself at her own pun, and relief floods his chest at the sweet flutter of his mistress’s laughter.

“Please, Domina,” he says, but only because it is what is expected of him—she could refuse him and he would not be any less elated.

But she is generous, his mistress. Her hand hovers above his, a soft light pouring out of her fingertips, and magic pools into his palm to knit his flesh back together strand by strand. The throbbing burn becomes a deep-seated itch, then a light tingle until even that vanishes, leaving him hollowed out.

His body buckles under his weight, and Hawke lets him rest his head onto her lap. “Oh, Fenris, my sweet little Fenris,” she says, caressing his hair. “I do hate to see you like this, but you left me no choice.” She wipes his face with her sleeve, shushing him. Is he weeping? Surely not from the pain, now that only its ghost remains. Perhaps simply from the sheer relief of not being cast aside in spite of his mistakes.

Hawke runs her thumb along his bottom lip, healing the bruises he must have bit into it, then cradles his head and smiles down at him. Her blue eyes shine between spidery lashes, beautiful and bright. “Here, handsome as ever. I can even think of another way or two for you to make yourself _completely_ forgiven.”

Something swells inside him, taking up all the space in his chest. “Anything, Domina.”

The smile stretches across her face as she leans back into her chair, draping one leg on the edge of the dressing table. The hem of her robe rides up the white expanse of her thighs as she parts them, nudging him between her open legs with a few tugs on his chain.

Desire coils low in his stomach. He does not deserve her forgiveness, much less the privilege to pleasure her—to _taste_ her—but he wants nothing more than to satisfy his mistress. If he is good she might even let him into her bed again, where he can devote his entire body to her pleasure, and watch it bloom pink on her cheeks while she whispers his name between kisses. “Fen,” she said last night, hands curled around his ears to better bridge the distance between their lips, “oh, Fen,” she said, a soft blue light glowing under heavy eyelids. _I’m here_ and _don’t leave me_ and _I love you_ , her mouth said—though not with words—and he remembers the inebriating rush of letting himself believe he deserved it.

_With you, it might be different._

And it _had_. Hawke gives as much as she takes, if not more, and for the first time he felt something like the gentle stirring of a hot summer breeze through leaves, the ripple of birdsong in the sweet-smelling grass, the fragrant waft of a flowering apple tree, and he had the strange, sudden idea that this feeling— _this_ must be what people call happiness.

He recoils.

Whoever— _whatever_ —is sitting in front of him cannot be Hawke.

She gives his chain a tug. “What’s wrong, my little wolf?” she says, a smile splitting her face in two like a knife cut. “You’re usually so _eager_. Come now. Nice and—”

Fenris jerks the chain out of her grasp and darts away from her. The chair clatters to the floor as she jumps to her feet and rises to her full length, spindly and slender. “I’m your _mistress_ ,” she hisses, “and you dare deny me? Do as you are told, slave, or you will spend every last minute of your pathetic existence wishing that you had.”

Now he sees the creature before him for what it is. Her mouth is a twisted wound in the middle of her face; her pale, plump skin hardens to chitin in the candlelight, and her eyes—her eyes were never there, her pupils bleeding outside their edges until he finds himself staring into emptiness.

“ _No,_ ” he retorts, then swings the coil of chain at her face.

It strikes her temple with a loud jangle, and she tumbles to the dressing table, her head smashing the mirror into a spiderweb of splintered shards. When she pulls herself up, her reflection is fractured into some hideous mosaic gone wrong, a multitude of tiny dark eyes gleaming at him. A thick, black drop of ichor rolls down her cheek.

Her spine jerks upright. “So you’re going to kill me now, aren’t you? Just like you did your friends on Seheron, right?” she says with a voice that grits like sand under teeth. “All they saw was some mewling, pathetic little slave, they didn’t know they’d just let a rabid dog into the coop, did they?”

For each step she takes in his direction, Fenris takes one back, until the far wall of the bedchamber presses against his shoulder blades. He shivers, the smooth, polished wainscoting cold against his backside. Even if he could make his way past her and to the door, where would that lead? Where could he hope to go that is not part of her demesne?

No. The only way out is _through_ her, he decides, so he focuses on the strange sway of her head as she speaks, letting the words roll off him like rain.

Let her come. He can face a demon.

“Do you remember, my pet? ‘Kill them, Fenris,’” she says, and the voice that comes out of her mouth then is Danarius’s, all gentility gone out of it: it is enough to conjure the sight of his former master, a slick, dark patch spreading on his robes where a spearhead hit true, the jeers and hoots of the Fog Warriors, and the green smells of the jungle, rain-soaked earth and rotting leaves and a rolling fog thick as wool. “And then you _ripped_ the beating hearts right out of their chests.”

The room is shifting, the walls swimming in and out of his vision while the demon’s shadow encroaches upon the quivering candlelight. The air becomes stifling, almost too dense to breathe, and presses down onto him with all the weight of the storm clouds that hang low in Seheron’s fickle skies. Fenris aims the chain at her again, but it whips through the air without connecting.

Her grin is too big for her face. “You killed them _all_. Kumya, and Rimak, and Sisa—oh, that one took a long time to die, didn’t she, Fenris? She laughed at first, thought there was no way you’d turn on them—and then you did, just like that,” she finishes with an emphatic snap of her fingers.

At that his feet sink into soft, damp soil. The cloying smell of rot washes over the room while vines and roots slither about the ground and curl around the furniture, splintering the carved wood of the bed posters and table legs. Plaster flakes off the walls, leaving cracked, mossy bark in its place; tree leaves the size of shields bloom from the ceiling, dripping with rainwater, and dim, dappled light falls onto the creature before him, illuminating her chitinous face.

Sisa is screaming—not in his memories, but right behind him, so close he has no doubt that were he to turn, he would see her again, her breastbone bared like the shell of a cracked oyster.

“I don’t need you to remember, demon,” he snarls, and strikes at her again.

The thing wearing Hawke’s face vanishes, gone as a gust of wind, and the sobs behind him die out into a gurgle. For the span of a breath Fenris almost believes that he has won, but no—somehow the silence is _worse_. The tangled undergrowth teems with the nameless, accusatory eyes of all those he has killed, and there are _so many:_ every slave, every sacrifice, every soldier slain by his hand in the name of his master is waiting there in the shadowy depths, trembling with rage as the jungle closes down on him.

Fenris steels himself against them. He does not fear death, nor the souls whose journey there he has hastened, even as they slink up to him amidst roots and ferns, twitching in the shadows at the edge of his vision.

“Show yourself,” he shouts, but his only answer is the flapping of birds’ wings and the soft, muffled echo of his own voice. “I am not afraid.”

“But _I_ am,” says Hawke—no, the _demon_ —somewhere behind him, and he whirls around towards the direction of her voice. Ice slides inside his veins when he finds himself staring into her eyes again, blue and bright with tears. “I wish you’d never told me about the Fog Warriors, Fen. What if you end up killing me too?” Sunlight and shadows swing over her in an endless chase as the treetops sway overhead; she takes a step towards him, then another, tugging the collar of her robe loose. “How many times have you hurt me now? How many times have you broken my heart? Why don’t you just get it over with and tear it out? Isn’t that what you want?”

The white curve of her breasts emerge from the folds of her collar, her heart beating within hand’s reach. A teardrop rolls down her cheek, slides down her collarbone, then the swell of one breast. _This is not Hawke_ , Fenris reminds himself, but the thought rings with all the unbearable hollowness of doubt.

He lowers the coil of chain in his hands. A flicker of hesitation, nothing more, but she senses it with the same predatory anticipation as a wolf smelling blood.

She strikes.

Fenris falls back, hitting floor tiles slick with still-warm blood, but the sensation is a faint, faraway thing, lost in the blinding blaze of agony tearing through his senses. He would beg for the candle flame instead if he remembered how to form words: its heat seems indulgent now compared to the liquid fire seeping into those thorny patterns he knows so well, burning through his skin to pool into the hollow of his bones.

A foot slams down onto his chest. “You _belong_ to me,” the shape towering above him bellows, haloed by writhing black strands, and the voice that rings through his skull belongs to Danarius, and Hawke, and Hadriana, and to something far, far worse all at once. “ _I_ made you, you pathetic creature. Without me, you are _nothing_.”

Her form bleeds outside its own edges; her eyes are too many, filling up her face like holes. Behind her silhouette, pillars climb high through the dense canopy of the jungle, holding up the sloping arches of the ritual room where he was born, awash in the wintry glow of raw lyrium. His heart races with the wild unbound terror of waking without past, without name, without purpose except that which is before him.

And yet. Now he knows that the truth is otherwise. _Fenris is a free man,_ a woman’s voice calls out from far away, from a dream within a dream, and he catches flitting, fleeting glimpses of her face through the peeling shadows of the nightmare.

Fenris does what he should have done the first time.

He summons the latent power of his markings to push himself up and _through_ the demon, rolling out from under her foot, and she crumbles to the floor with a furious hiss. Ignoring the screaming agony of his brands, he crawls along the cold hard tiles to pin her down, pressing one knee between her shoulder blades. Then he loops the tangled chain of his collar around her neck, and pulls as hard as he can.

The room explodes in a shrill cacophony of screams and shrieks. If he had half a thought to spare, he would be surprised at how many voices he recognises: Sisa again, choking on her own blood; Hadriana’s hired help begging for mercy; a boy whose throat Danarius had him slit to fuel a blood magic spell—and underneath it all, the demon, howling with a voice like stone grinding against steel while she twists under him, clawing at him with spindly, spidery limbs. Blood gushes hot down his arms and face where her talons catch on skin. The smashed mirror, now caught in the vines of a tree, flickers with the cold, cruel light of lyrium, scattering broken, blinding beams through the woolen fog blanketing the ritual room.

Fenris shuts his eyes. He pulls harder on the chain, clenching his jaw through the blistering pain chafing his palms raw, even as the demon spasms and sobs in Hawke’s voice until she goes limp—

He jerks awake to find himself sitting up in his bedroll, Hawke’s favour stretched taut between his hands.

No demon. No pain. No _chains_.

“Bad dreams, huh?” someone says, and Fenris reaches for his greatsword, lying next to him like a faithful lover, but pauses, fingertips resting on the hilt. All things considered, the young man seated by the campfire seems rather harmless, with his tousle of sandy hair and his sweet, smooth face. “Care for some ale?” he offers, grabbing the flask at his feet and giving it a shake.

“Please,” Fenris replies once his throat has loosened its hold around his heart. His hand closes around the neck of the flask when his unexpected companion tosses it at him in a low arc, and Fenris uncaps it to sniff at its contents, only to promptly regrets his decision. The eye-watering fumes reek of death and deep mushroom, and he is reminded of the commotion Hawke once caused at the Hanged Man when she cracked a vial of Martin’s contraband poison.

Foam rolls thick and bitter down his throat when he risks a sip, coating the roof of his mouth. He gags.

The stranger laughs. “Sorry, I should’ve warned you. Grey Warden brew. On the bright side, even the worst of nightmares will seem rather innocuous in comparison. No stranger to them, myself, so. Hey, looks like we have a lot in common already,” he adds with a boyish grin that makes him seem more of an overgrown child than a man.

Fenris cocks one eyebrow. “Do we?”

“Well, nightmares, for a start. We’re also both—uh, _men_ , and—and _swordsmen_ at that,” he adds, gesturing towards his own sheathed sword. “And we’re both … well, _here_. Out of all the thousands and thousands of people in _aaall_ of Thedas, only the two of us are here, in this quaint little dell right outside Lothering. What are the odds?”

“Very unfortunate ones, it appears,” Fenris sighs, rubbing his eyelids before glancing at the lad. Even in the flickering light of the crackling flames, he looks familiar, somehow—infuriatingly so—but Fenris cannot place him. “Who are you?”

“Oh! Right. Sorry. The name’s Alistair. Alistair of the Grey Wardens of Ferelden,” he finishes, not without a hint of pride beneath the words.

“Fenris.” Against his better judgment, he takes another swig of rotgut. A cough doubles him over as it burns its way down to his stomach, and he screws the cap back on before tossing the flask back to Alistair. “The nightmare is indeed the last thing on my mind, I will give you that.”

And he finds it is the truth. The thunder of his heartbeat has steadied again, and the soft whistle of the breeze is now blowing the memory of the demon away into the night. He tries to remember what lies beyond the lingering haze of the nightmare. He remembers the night he spent with Hawke, and before that there had been … Hadriana? No. Fenris is forgetting something, not least of all how he ended up here.

He squints at the darkness: pale tree trunks hedge the camp, hillocks hem the inky sky in the distance, stars twinkle amidst the whirl of sparks rising from the flames of the campfire … “What did you say this place is?” he asks Alistair.

Alistair takes an impressive swallow of ale, or what is trying to pass as such, anyway, then breaks into a grin. “This here is no other than the village of Lothering, right to the edge of the Korcari Wilds in southern Ferelden, where it all began. Or ended, I suppose, depending on how you see it.”

“Lothering?” Fenris repeats, and the name tastes of freshly baled grass and windswept earth and the morning after a snowstorm. “Was it not destroyed during the Blight?”

“Trust me, this is better. Few places are improved by the darkspawn corruption, as it were. It’s all so grim and gross. And don’t get me started about the stench. Urgh.”

Fenris eyes the stroll of a windmill’s sails across the night sky; the sweet, sparkling song of a lute dances at the edge of his hearing with the long-lost echoes of laughter and the rustle of book pages. “This is where Hawke used to live, then?”

Alistair’s face lights up. “The tavern girl, eh? You should have seen her when we got here, throwing all these thugs out the door on their arses with this big wave of magic”—he guffaws—“and then she says, I kid you not: ‘We don’t serve _rats_ here.’” Fenris cannot help the smile tugging at a corner of his mouth while Alistair laughs, until he turns an interesting shade of crimson and runs a self-conscious hand through his hair. “I, um. I suppose I shouldn’t have told you she’s a mage. People sort of forget they’re supposed to fear magic during a Blight.”

Fenris chuckles. “Nothing I did not already know, I assure you.”

In hindsight, he wonders how he did not see it the instant she came into view, the night they met: she looked impossibly small, tucked between her brother and Aveline, but something about her had dwarfed even the tangled branches of the Vhenadahl towering over the alienage. Now he cannot think of Hawke as anything _but_ magic, a knot of dreams and memories and the faint imprint of so many hopes transmuted to sheer power under her skin.

_Magic is a thought made real. Magic is a wish come true._

He frowns at the slash of red between his fingers, then looks up again to see Alistair grinning at him. “You like her, don’t you?” the Warden teases.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he scoffs in answer.

Alistair laughs his free, full-throated laugh. “If you were any more obviously sweet on her you’d attract bears—or _bees_ or—I don’t know. Something that likes sweet things.”

Fenris blows out a deep breath. “As if I did not have enough at my heels already without bears or bees.”

“Sounds even more like you could use someone like her at your side, then. _We_ could’ve, that’s for sure, but she didn’t want to leave her family.” Alistair’s gaze drops to his hands, and for the first time Fenris notices the single rose blossom twirling between his fingers. “You know, she reminds me a little bit of Solona. I mean, not just the pretty mage thing, but … I don’t know. How they both try to do some good around them. Hawke thought keeping the villagers and refugees safe was worth the risk of making herself known as a mage when everyone else looked the other way. And Solona … well, you know. Saved the world and all.”

Fenris pictures a younger Hawke, scarless save perhaps for those keepsakes of an unruly childhood, warding off bandits and roaming beasts displaced by the Blight, lighting fires to keep refugees warm and melting down shards of ice magic to ensure that no one goes thirsty.

Strange to think that the Hero of Ferelden and the Champion of Kirkwall once crossed paths without ever being aware of their blood ties. Even stranger that Fenris should be the one to know about them.

“Hawke and Solona are second cousins,” he volunteers, and as he speaks the Amells’ scattered tragedies come together as though seen from a distance, a tapestry too terrible to behold: the same man who loved one of their mothers murdered the other, Fenris realises for the first time, and he has to turn away from the thought. “Their family’s ancestral seat is in Kirkwall, which Hawke’s mother left after falling in love with a Fereldan mage. Solona and her siblings all turned out to be mages and were taken to different Circles.”

Eyes narrowed, Alistair looks at him for a moment, then breaks out into laughter. “Almost had me there. Do you _really_ think I can’t tell when someone’s pulling my leg? You’re going to have to do a whole lot better than that, my friend. I’ve been a recruit for the Templars _and_ the Grey Wardens.”

“It’s the truth,” Fenris huffs.

“Uh-huh, and I’m the Queen of Antiva. Anyway, I can tell it’s all just one clever, clever ruse to distract me from the real matter at hand here, which is you and Hawke.”

There is something so _earnest_ in Alistair’s steadfast resolve that Fenris cannot even roll his eyes at him. “There is nothing you can say I have not told myself already. Hawke deserves better than what I can give her. I’m an escaped slave with no memory of my past, whose only a family is a sister who may have been made up to lure me back to the Imperium. I spent the last few years hunted at every turn, and the years before that, doing the bidding of a man whose only interest is his own standing in the magisterium, no matter the cost.” He runs his thumb up and down the soft, frayed edge of Hawke’s favour. “And Hawke … Hawke deserves better than my blaming her for all this.” He pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “Why am I even telling you this?”

“Because of my exceptional charm and boyish good looks?” Alistair replies, a smile warming his voice. “And see? We _do_ have plenty of things in common, after all. I also had a sister I’d never met. Well, except that I _did_ meet her in the end, so I suppose she’s just my sister now, even though the reality of it feels … different, to say the least.”

He clears his throat in a transparent attempt at nonchalance, even as he shuffles in his seat and fiddles with his rose. The flames of the campfire gouge deep channels between his eyebrows.

“What happened with your sister?” Fenris asks, as much as he does not want to.

“Oh. You know. Just your average awkward family reunion, I suppose. Kind of a long story otherwise. It’ll bore you to tears,” he adds with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“I have time.”

Alistair gives a one-shouldered shrug. “Well, it turned out that she resented me for something that was out of my control, tried to talk me into giving her coin to make up for it, then kicked us out of her house when Solona took my defence.”

“I’m sorry. I … cannot imagine what that must be like,” Fenris says, except he _can_ , and his chest clenches at the thought. “You wish you had not met her, then?”

His eyes are opaque as Alistair stares into the firelight. “No, I’m glad I did,” he answers after a moment. “Otherwise I’d have spent the rest of my life wondering. Not that the rest of my life ended up being that long afterwards,” he adds, chuckling despite the past losses clouding his gaze. “But after Teyrn Loghain betrayed King Cailan and the Wardens at Ostagar … I couldn’t afford to waffle around. I didn’t even mind _dying_ if it meant that Solona would live on to keep smiling. She has this way of smiling like you’re everything that matters, you know?”

“I do,” Fenris answers under his breath. He must still be dreaming, then, because he remembers Alistair now: the Warden whose hand dealt the killing blow to the Archdemon, whose sacrifice put an end to the Blight, scattering the darkspawn horde as surely as it did the pieces of Solona’s broken heart.

“You _really_ do like Hawke,” Alistair teases again, grinning—a big, boyish grin that barely makes him look the twenty springs he must have been, and Fenris feels a bright dart of anger at magic for creating a world where youths are too often reduced to living weapons.

“Perhaps,” he answers this time, because there is little harm in giving a—what? a ghost? a memory?—this small satisfaction, at least.

“Well, then, here is for my completely unsolicited advice: I know you must have your reasons for not getting in touch with your sister or wanting to let Hawke know you care for her, but whatever those reasons are? They’re only as important as you make them. So I say you should go for it.”

 _You know nothing,_ Fenris wants to say, but what reason does he have, if not Danarius? Danarius, always Danarius controlling him from afar, and Fenris still cowering in his shadow as though it stretched across half the land.

Alistair is right.

“Thank you,” Fenris breathes. A wild, exhilarating thought swells inside him: could Hawke—or some memory of her—be here, in this dream of Lothering? His heart starts rattling inside his ribcage, and he pulls himself to his feet without thinking, watching as morning breaks behind the proud towers of the Chantry.

“My pleasure. Oh, and one last piece of advice, if I may: can’t go wrong with roses,” Alistair says, raising his rose to his nose to breathe in the scent before drawing his brow. “Or can you? Well, it worked for me, anyway.”

Fenris gives him a lopsided smile. “Hawke is not much one for flowers.”

“Oh. Right, then. It’s probably for the best, anyway, since that was the last rose on the bush and all.” He smiles, and Fenris’s chest gives an unexpected clench of regret, because this memory of Alistair, this last remnant of a life ended too soon, will be gone once he wakes. But the young man seems unbothered by his own fate. “Maker be with you, Fenris, whatever the future holds,” he says, half bowing. “Now go sweep her off her feet.”

And so Fenris heads towards the village, tying Hawke’s favour back around his wrist as he walks. Lothering is blurred, as though his eyes could not focus on the thatched roofs and pastures; out of the corner of his eye he sees tendrils of darkspawn corruption strangling the leaves off tree branches and seeping between the cracks of the bark, but turning his head he sees gilded slants of sunlight splashing onto the cornflowers and marigolds that grow between stones, flecking the path to the Chantry with bright spots of colour.

Time itself is blurred, he realises, folded over itself like sheets of the thinnest gauze. Dawn breaks onto the village as the sun sets, and snow falls onto summer grasses all at once. In the orchard, ripe apples shine like Hawke’s cheeks when she has had too much to drink at the Hanged Man, peeking between clumps of snow and blossoming boughs, petals and snowflakes swirling all about him in the crisp autumn breeze and—

“Fenris,” Hawke says behind him, and Fenris whirls in the direction of her voice, and it is summer all at once, the sky screaming blue behind her and the grass rippling with a sun-bright wind, though he cannot tell if the heat rising to his cheeks has anything to do with it. “What are you doing here?”

“I was thinking of you,” he says. It is only a dream, after all—of a place and a time and a young woman all gone; here at least, he can be honest.

She breaks into a smile so bright even the glaring sunlight seems dull in comparison. “Strange. No one from Kirkwall has ever turned up in my dreams before, but I can’t say I dislike the idea.” She rises on tiptoes to peer at him through slitted eyes. “Not bad. I did a pretty good job.”

“Your dream?” he asks, baffled.

“Of course. What else could it be? You’re wearing my favour, and you’re not angry at me for supposedly casting a spell on you,” she explains, and Fenris feels himself turn the colour of the silk at his wrist. “Besides, you’ve never even _seen_ Lothering. How could you be dreaming about it?”

“Perhaps this is simply how I imagine Lothering was.”

“And you’d conjure me along with it? I’m _flattered_ ,” she laughs.

Fenris smirks. “What else would be the point?”

Her mouth falls open, and he glories in the rare sight of her rendered speechless. “Well, I suppose there’s no harm in telling you that I’m pleased you dreamed me up, then. Shall I give you a tour?” she asks, presenting her arm.

He links his arm with hers as though it were the most natural thing in the world. “I would be delighted,” he answers.

“Alright, then.” She leads him to the center of the village, where the stone paths and dust roads converge. “Here we have the Lothering Chantry,” she starts, gesturing towards the stone structure with its stained-glass windows and spiked arches, sculpted in the shape of sunrays, “home to Revered Mother Rosalinde and her flock, and over there,” she continues, indicating a thatched building with dimly lit windows, “is Dane’s Refuge, where you would find … well, everyone else.”

Fenris waits for her to continue, but they stand there side by side in the middle of the village, arms locked. “This is it?”

“Excuse me, serah,” Hawke scoffs in mock outrage, “we can’t _all_ be from the biggest city there ever was.”

He only lets go of her arm to spin in a slow circle once: all about them is the sparkling song of wind chimes, sheep like bleating, grazing clouds in the distant pastures, lovingly crafted fences circling vegetable patches with tomatoes ripening in the sunshine and clumps of leaves sticking out of delicate trellis. It is so unlike anything he’s ever seen, it seems impossible for Tevinter—with its rampant misery and sweaty crowds, and always some blood-tinged, feral scent underneath it all—to even exist on the same earth.

Perhaps it is indeed nothing more than his own dream of Lothering, pieced together from Hawke’s reminisced anecdotes and those barns and stables along the road where he would steal into while trying to outrun Danarius—yet some nameless ache tightens his chest thinking about the dust from these paths settling on Hawke’s boots, this southern breeze blowing through her hair and her skirts before the Blight and before Kirkwall.

“I’m sorry, I meant … It’s perfect.” Fenris points at Dane’s Refuge. “This is the tavern where you worked?”

She turns a pretty shade of pink at that. “How on earth would you know about that? Oh, because it’s _my_ dream, of course.” She grins, then leads him down a small path of white stones that wobble under their steps. “I’ll take you somewhere nicer, though.”

The stone path turns to packed earth, then even that disappears as they walk through the rustling grass of the knolls, bright dandelions shivering in their wake. He steals a glance at her profile, the full lashes lining her blue eyes, the freckles peeping through the sunburn on her cheekbones. Her shirt is soft, supple linen, tucked into the waist of her skirt, and the loose collar threatens to slip off her shoulder. “Did you enjoy working as a serving girl?”

“Sure,” Hawke answers with a shrug, and a constellation of freckles and beauty marks peeps out from under her collar before she tugs it back into place. “It was the only place where anything ever happened. Once in a while we’d even get some handsome traveler or mercenary with a foreign accent, and I’d just milk them for every last shred of information they had about all these cities with unpronounceable names, like Emprise du Lion or Nordbotten,” she says in rounded Orlesian vowels and gritty Ander consonants. “Never anyone from Tevinter, though.” Her eyes are glittering with mirth when she cuts a look at him, biting her bottom lip. “Oh, Maker, I’d have fallen for you _so hard_ if you’d walked in there with that big sword and intense eyes of yours.”

An almost drunken burst of effervescence ripples through him. Either he is dreaming of Hawke, and whatever he tells her now will be forever tucked away in some secret fold of the Fade, or she is dreaming of him, and he will return to drifting flecks of dreams once she wakes.

Somehow, he finds himself oddly at peace with the idea. “I could see myself falling for a certain free-spirited tavern girl,” he replies.

Hawke laughs, a glimmering flutter he wishes he could carry with him for the rest of his days. “Now I know this is _my_ dream, because you’d never be saying these things otherwise,” she says, then lets herself fall back onto a cloud of dandelions gone to seed. “Will you whisk me away from this dull and dreary place, then?”

“Tempting. To Antiva, perhaps? Or Rivain?” He stretches down next to her in a patch of dappled light and threads his fingers together over his stomach. Blades of grass prickle his skin; the wind is heady with the scent of summer blossoms as it rustles through the nearby copse of trees, alive with chirping birds. White downy clouds stream overhead in a never-ending sky, close enough to touch. “Or we could stay right here. Even this place couldn’t possibly be boring with you in it.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised. Nothing to do here except watch the grass grow and gossip about the neighbours.” She flicks her shoes off, then brushes her toes back and forth across the dandelion and daisy heads at her feet. “All I wanted was to get away the first chance I got, so every year I’d ask Danal to let me work at the tavern, and every year he’d say, ‘Maybe next year’ until I _finally_ turned seventeen. Mother and I had such a row over it, we didn’t talk for days.” She plucks a daisy and twirls it between her fingers. “She thought it’d make me—what was the word she used?— _dissolute_.”

He turns his head to watch her pluck the petals off the yellow head. “Yet you stayed in Lothering.”

“Well, I did manage to save enough coin to travel to Denerim and Val-Royeaux a couple of times, but then Father died, and … I couldn’t leave Mother alone with the twins.” She flicks the flower away, then picks another one when she finds her hands empty. “I suppose I resigned myself to the idea that I’d spend my whole life here. Now that it’s gone, of course, I find myself missing the bloody place.” Her chest falls with a sigh, and her hands drop back to her sides. “Sorry. I must sound like such an ungrateful little brat to you, whining about my perfectly comfortable youth.”

A light prickle creeps along his knuckles, and he looks down to see a ladybug bridging the finger of one hand to the other. “Not at all. It was home all the same, even if you did not see it as such then. You’ve earned the right to miss Lothering,” he says, nudging the insect onto a dandelion. It flies off as though in a huff. “I’ve … never had the luxury.”

For a long moment there is nothing but the chirping of crickets, the chatter of birds in the trees, and the endless sigh of the wind, until Hawke flings her daisy away with a muffled cry of frustration. “I wish I could give you _this,_ ” she exclaims with a sweep of her arms. “I hate that he took it away from you.”

His gaze follows a pair of starlings wheeling across the sky. “You’ve given me more than you know, Hawke,” Fenris breathes in answer.

“And more than you bargained for, apparently.” Her tone is light, but he senses something dark just beneath the surface. “I’m sorry, you know. About the dreams. And … those things I said to you.”

“You were hurt.” He sighs, pinching the favour around his wrist. “ _I_ should apologise. I did not understand, and it—scared me. Keeping you away was easier than admitting it.”

“I suppose that makes us even, then,” she replies with a wistful smile. Her eyes then drift to the chasing clouds overhead, and she blows out a shuddering breath that runs with the wind down the blooming hill. “You know, I wouldn’t change a thing, even if I could. Well, except for the part where I managed to give you a token of affection somehow haunted by the Amells.”

“I would,” he says, and he has never been surer of anything. “If I could go back, I would stay. Ask for your forgiveness.”

She looks at him, spots of sunlight dancing on her hair. “As if you’ve ever needed my forgiveness, Fen,” she says at last, her voice little more than a whisper.

For a half-moment, he senses the light brush of her flirtation twined in the words, that gentle beneficence he has so often taken for granted. “Perhaps not,” he allows, and the truth of that stings. Hawke is ever-forgiving, _too_ forgiving, even of him. Especially of him. Of all the injustices he has done her, all the midnight accusations that rang in his scarred mind and yet never passed his lips, perhaps the worst is that he has kept the two of them apart for so long.

His wrist burns again, but looking into her eyes, the smell of smoke lingering in his nose fades, and his hands clench with the desire to feel her skin beneath his again. As if reading his thoughts, Hawke reaches for his hand; Fenris laces their fingers together, suddenly aware that either one of them might float away at any given moment, that all that holds them together is some flimsy, fleeting yarn spun of dream-strands, threatening to unravel.

“Look,” she says after a time, pointing to something overhead, “that cloud over there looks like a druffalo.”

“I see it. And that one looks like … _well_.”

Her eyes follow his finger to the plump, rounded curve of one low cloud, and she lets out a loud, unladylike snort that would have set Hightown murmuring behind outraged hands.

Fenris looks at her, unable to suppress a grin. “It looks a little like—”

“Don’t say it, Fen,” she laughs, pressing her hand to his lips. “Don’t you _dare_ say it.”

He clasps one hand around her thin wrist and manages to lift her palm off his mouth. “It looks like a butt,” he finishes between her fingers, and she bursts out into bright stained-glass shards of laughter. “At least now we know beyond a doubt whose dream this is.”

“Oh?” She rolls over, still laughing despite her obvious efforts, and half-drapes herself over his chest. “And what does _that_ mean? You think that I dream up arses in the clouds as a matter of routine?”

“Why would I? _You_ were the one complaining about this place,” he retorts.

“It could be a peach. _You’re_ the one getting lewd ideas.”

His hands seek her waist of their own accord. A strand of black hair slips from behind her ear, and warmth ripples through him when it brushes against his cheek. “And whose fault is that?”

Without thinking, he wipes the tears of laughter still beading the corners of her eyes. Hawke does not answer, flushed almost all the way down to the freckles he noticed earlier on her bare shoulder. Her heart rattles against his, a faint echo of his own, and though he knows—he _knows_ that this moment is not real, that it is nothing more than a tangled knot of straggling Fade wisps that would not make sense anywhere else, it seems worth all the pain he has endured in his short, brutal life.

“Can I kiss you?” Hawke asks in a brittle, breathless voice. “Since it’s all just a dream anyway?”

Fenris cannot find his voice. Instead he curls his hands around her small ears and bends her mouth to his, almost reverentially. Her lips taste sweeter than the breeze bursting with bright blossoms and birdsong, soft as the dandelions tickling the soles of his feet. It is nothing like the frantic, feverish kissing of their first night together: this is the frail drooping head of a snowdrop after the dead of winter, the whispered promise of more, the faint, fragile warmth of the barest embers brought back to life. She sighs into his mouth, fingers closed around his sleeve, and for the span of a dream, at least, all is sweet and gold as honey.

Their lips part, and he opens his eyes to see her lashes flutter. “I’m yours, Hawke,” he breathes between their mouths.

Her breath catches in her throat; her eyes open into his, wide with sudden awareness. They shine bluer than ever, and it takes Fenris a moment to realise that what he sees is the clear Lothering sky, tumbling out of them. Sunlight slants through her in bright, broken beams, illuminating her face from within, and when she opens her mouth to speak, it spills out from between her lips like a puff of mist in winter. “I think—I think I’m waking up,” she says, and the comfortable weight of her body is gone just like that; Fenris falls, her hair slipping like silk between his fingers, and the dream scatters around them in a swirl of sunlit dandelion seeds.

He wakes—again—to see dawn break in streaks of gold onto the treetops of Sundermount. Far in the distance, Kirkwall seems small enough to fit into his palm, and somewhere in the lightening swath of Hightown’s tiled rooftops and cobbled streets, Hawke is there, safe and warm.

For an instant he thinks he might still be dreaming, because he sees her, suddenly, stirring awake, and between them, something like a thread of silver, catching the morning light and tossing it about in sparkling, flitting shards. _Magic is a wish come true_ , he hears again, and at last he understands: what binds them is far more than the slash of red at his wrist—it ripples eternal in the secret rivers of the Fade, borne on swift, silent streams like lilies turned to seafoam, a silken scarf become smoke upon Mara’s pyre, and beyond the Hunterhorns, beyond the ramparts of the Warden fortress at Weisshaupt, the fragrance of a red rose kept ever blooming by magic.

* * *

Fenris has never been gladder to see the city’s namesake looming ahead as he makes his way home under the baleful stare of the Old Gods carved into the cliff. It is all he can do _not_ to run up the stairs leading to Hightown and knock at Hawke’s door—least of all because showing up wearing the same clothes he did when they fought nearly two days ago might detract from his apology, and that’s without even mentioning the smell of sweat and smoke sticking to him.

No—there is something that must be done first, before his mettle melts away with the last few lingering wisps of his dream.

“Elf?” Varric says with a startled laugh when he finds Fenris outside his suite, still slightly out of breath from the long way home. “To what do I—Andraste’s _ass_ , did you make your way here through the sewers or something?”

He follows Varric’s eyes down the large splotches of dried-up, greenish-brown residue flaking off his armour. “Oh, that. Spider innards and demonic ichor, I believe,” he answers, flicking off a clump of pine needles sticking to his breastplate.

“You’re covered in spider goo _and_ visibly in a good mood,” Varric says with a chuckle, pulling the door open and motioning him inside. “This I have to hear. Just—don’t touch anything.” He gestures to one of the chairs. “Can I get you a drink?”

Fenris sits, heart skipping a beat when he finds himself falling back. “Please,” he manages, clutching the armrests. He evidently underestimated just how low chairs of dwarven make sit.

“I’d say I’m sorry,” Varric laughs, watching him struggle to maneuver his legs around the trestle of the too-low table, “but I never tire of seeing you people do this. I can get you a cushion or two, though.”

At last he plants his heels on the trestle and settles back. “No need. I will not bother you for long.”

Varric pours them both a knuckle of amber whiskey, sweeps aside the reams of papers piled up on the table, then sits down in front of him. They tilt their glasses together before each taking a sip; the whiskey is smooth, fragrant with woodsmoke and spices, and pools pleasantly warm into his stomach.

“Alright, elf, I’m all ears—pun not intended,” Varric adds, drawing a chuckle out of him. “Anything I can do for you, I’m your dwarf.”

Fenris takes another sip, and stares at the downy spray of Varric’s quill while the whiskey rolls down his tongue. “You mentioned before a cousin in the Imperium’s dwarven Ambassadoria,” he says over his quickening pulse.

“My cousin Thorold,” Varric answers, something softening at the bottom of his brown eyes. “Now betrothed to newly-titled Magister Maevaris Tilani, as a matter of fact.”

“Tilani,” Fenris repeats under his breath, and the name conjures the image of a statuesque woman, with perfectly coiffed curls and chiseled cheekbones. “Her father was executed for plotting against Magister Diodorus.”

“Framed, to be exact, but yeah, that’s the one. Mae outmaneuvered them all in the end, and now puts the entire magisterium’s dress sense to shame on the daily. If anyone can track down your sister, it’s her.” Varric blinks up at him, then clears his throat. “Assuming that’s the reason you’re asking, of course.”

Last chance to turn back somewhat gracefully. Fenris takes a breath, nods his head, then smiles. “It is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realise that the entire scene pitting Fenris against the fear demon is far from being pleasant to read, but I at least hope that it didn’t seem gratuitous. My first take on this chapter was completely different, but in the end I felt it was just more of the same, and so I ended up scrapping it in favour (hah) of having Fenris literally defeat his fear of Hawke’s magic and of her feelings for him. It’s probably my favourite thing I’ve ever written, even though the process was quite grueling, to say the least! I really hope it was worth the wait (and all the tears I cried writing this, haha), and I would love to hear your thoughts! ♥


	5. Amabel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After that strange lucid dream he had on Sundermount, Fenris finally tells Hawke everything his dreams have revealed about the Amell family. Thanks to Varric, he has also managed to get in touch with his sister. Things seem to be falling into place at last …

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It wouldn’t be a proper FWBU chapter without an apology for the long wait, so without further ado: I’m so sorry for the delay! It’s been a rough couple of months since the last part: I moved, got sick, burned myself out on this fic to the point where I had to step away from writing entirely for a week … but I’m back on my feet and here we are, finally! Thank you all _so much_ for sticking with me, and I really hope the conclusion delivers!
> 
> As always, many, many thanks to [sasskarian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sasskarian) and [theherocomplex](http://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/) for their invaluable insight and support, and to [BlondePomeranian](http://archiveofourown.org/users/BlondePomeranian) and [MyrddinDerwydd](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MyrddinDerwydd) for all their help. ♥
> 
> Please note that this chapter contains graphic violence, graphic injury, body horror, minor character death, mentions of suicide and slavery/sexual abuse, and explicit sexual content (at long last!)
> 
> * * *
> 
> There are names for what binds us:  
> strong forces, weak forces.  
> Look around, you can see them:  
> the skin that forms in a half-empty cup,  
> nails rusting into the places they join,  
> joints dovetailed on their own weight.  
> The way things stay so solidly  
> wherever they've been set down—  
> and gravity, scientists say, is weak.
> 
> And see how the flesh grows back  
> across a wound, with a great vehemence,  
> more strong  
> than the simple, untested surface before.  
> There's a name for it on horses,  
> when it comes back darker and raised: proud flesh,
> 
> as all flesh,  
> is proud of its wounds, wears them  
> as honors given out after battle,  
> small triumphs pinned to the chest—
> 
> And when two people have loved each other  
> see how it is like a  
> scar between their bodies,  
> stronger, darker, and proud;  
> how the black cord makes of them a single fabric  
> that nothing can tear or mend.
> 
> —Jane Hirshfield, “For What Binds Us”

Revka Amell’s funeral—if it can be called such—is a brief, quiet affair: the Amells are few, and those who remember her, even fewer, which leaves Fenris to accompany Hawke, as out of place as he is.

Upon his return from Sundermount, he told her everything the dreams had revealed about the Amells; Hawke listened, then took notes, then made inquiries, just as he knew she would. Never one to let sleeping mabaris lie, Hawke, as she says herself. Once he told her about the dreams, he knew they would be mere dreams no longer. Now they flow forth like a river undammed, sweeping things and people in their swell, as real as any other force of the waking world.

Few things matter to her more than family, after all, even when all that makes it so is a name harking back to the Fourth Blight. At her behest, Aveline unearthed the files of Damion Amell’s suspicious arrest and lifelong imprisonment, and Varric knew just which strings (and purse-strings) to pull to dig past the official story: Fausten Amell ruined himself trying to exonerate his son, emptying his coffers into Kirkwall’s underbelly before dying tangled up in a web of silent connections, slippery with the grease of so many palms. All to favour the ascension of Marlowe Dumar—whose weak rule would benefit the underworld—to the throne of the Viscount, and keep the Amells as far away from it. In the end, evidence supporting Damion’s suspected smuggling activities was scant at best, and as provisional viscount, Bran was only too eager to extend him a posthumous pardon if it meant getting Hawke out of his office and avoiding a scandal.

In the wax and wane of a single moon, she did what Fausten could not in a lifetime, and cleared both the son’s name and the father’s debts.

Reaching out to Revka’s children took her the entire summer and then some, however, in a slow dance of unanswered letters and disinterested replies: the eldest died years ago, the Circle of Ostwick regrettably informed her; one of the twins is now a wanted apostate, and the other, not allowed to leave Cumberland under any circumstances; and nothing is known of the youngest, whose trace was long lost in the constant shuffle of papers on a careless cleric’s desk.

For her part, Warden-Commander Solona Amell has mourned her life before Kinloch Hold aeons ago, her letter says, and so much more since, she has no need to revisit old wounds.

A strange funeral, then, without a body or ashes, without anyone even left to remember a woman long become froth on the cresting waves that break upon the cliffs. Had her memory not surfaced to wash ashore in a stranger’s dream, years later, Revka Amell would have gone unmourned.

Watching the white lilies on the altar, gilded with candlelight, Fenris is glad for this one belated kindness, at least.

But Hawke is not mourning Revka. Face set in the hard lines of grief, she holds one hand closed around her mother’s locket, thumbing the little songbird on its seashell branch, while Sebastian intones the Canticle of Trials in his pleasant Starkhaven brogue. Fenris does what little he can, and keeps his hand twined with hers as they sit side by side in the Chantry, letting his thoughts drift away in the warm gold of Sebastian’s voice.

When Fenris steals another look at Hawke, her lashes are wet but her brow is smooth again, something like forgiveness slowly sliding out of her grief’s tight fist. She only lets go of his hand afterwards, once they stand before the bronze of Andraste presiding over the steepled hall of the Chantry. For an instant he thinks Hawke will drop to her knees in prayer, but instead she tightens her hold around her mother’s locket and brings it to her brow. The sight of her mouthing in silence, one pale hand emerging from the folds of her lace shawl, is almost disconcerting in its intimacy, and Fenris lets his gaze wander away, leaving her to her contemplation. Above them, the prophet’s sculpted visage shines in the quivering flame of the hundred candles at her feet, melted wax pooling scarlet around the stumps. The stained-glass windows clad the listing light of dusk in blues, purples, and reds, threading gentle colours into Hawke’s hair and the freshwater pearls beading her shawl.

It is easy to rummage in his pockets for a handful of coppers and drop them in the donation box by the candles; even easier to join his hands together and bend his forehead to his fingertips. What comes next, however, is not so easy, and his mind gropes for a prayer. He thinks of his sister, toiling in a workshop somewhere in Qarinus, but words fail him, and in the end he settles for the few lines from Sebastian’s canticle that still linger in his mind:

> _I am not alone. Even_  
>  _As I stumble on the path_  
>  _With my eyes closed, yet I see_  
>  _The Light is here._

When Fenris opens his eyes again, Hawke is smiling at him, so bright it shears through the swirls of incense smoke to alight somewhere behind his breastbone. Such a simple thing it would be to lift his hand and touch her cheek, but someone steps into the outer edge of his vision and his hand stays by his side.

Hawke follows his eyes, the pearls of her shawl tinkling. “Uncle Gamlen? You’re just about the last person I expected to see here. I’m surprised you didn’t go up in flames the instant you stepped inside.”

Gamlen snorts. “I could tell you the same thing. Guess I’ve come to pay my respects,” he adds with a nonchalant shrug, then greets Fenris with a curt nod. If Gamlen remembers what he told him the day of Hawke’s investiture as Champion, he has shown no sign of it in the years since. “We weren’t close, but Revka was an Amell all the same. She should’ve been with the others.”

Hawke drops her gaze to the palm-sized Grey Warden escutcheon that was enclosed with Solona’s letter, now propped against one of the candles at Andraste’s feet. “It took me a long time to stop blaming her for what happened to Mother. If she hadn’t …” She sighs, leaving the thought hanging unfinished. “Well, it doesn’t matter now. No one should have to die like that.”

Fenris knows the driving despair that yawned at Revka’s feet, and not only for having seen it through her eyes. Once, had death’s mighty, inescapable gaze turned upon him, he would have welcomed it. But now, standing in the Chantry in Hawke’s fragrant shadow, her eyes full of candlelight and unwept tears, he catches himself hoping it does not come for him too soon.

The wish, fragile, unexpected, startles him out of his own thoughts.

Gamlen crosses his arms over his chest. “You’re a better person than I am, that’s for sure. That _Quentin_ , so damn unassuming and affable. It figures he was a fucking magicker all along,” he spits, then droops his shoulders when Hawke looks off to the statue of Andraste, wringing her hands under her shawl’s beaded fringe. “Bah, you know I don’t mean you. You did good, girl,” he adds after a pause, a new rasp in his voice. He clears his throat. “How did you even come across all that information about Revka and Damion, anyway?”

Hawke cuts a look at Fenris through her lashes. “A little bird told me,” she answers with an innocent smile, and Fenris is glad for the dim, shivering light hiding the heat creeping up his face. “Tell me about Revka, Uncle.”

“Well, she loved books, as I recall. Always seemed a little meek and self-effacing, but get her talking about Orlesian playwrights or what have you, and she could argue circles around Father himself. Once she kept a book hidden under the dining table when we visited, and not only did she manage to finish it before dessert, she held the conversation all through dinner. Her parents never noticed a thing,” he chuckles.

Hawke turns to gape at Fenris. “How have I never thought of doing this? I’d be a bloody scholar after all the endless dinners I’ve had to sit through!”

“What could have been,” he says, and he cannot help the swell of fondness that fills his chest when she sticks her tongue out in answer.

Gamlen snorts. “Anyway, Revka became more withdrawn after getting married. Guess having all those children took its toll.” His sudden bark of laughter cuts through the quiet of the Chantry, earning him a pointed look from Sebastian. “Five of them, can you imagine? The last two or three must’ve slipped right out.”

Fenris groans, while Hawke presses her fingers to her brow. “Andraste give me strength,” she sighs against her palm. “And here I thought we were having a moment.”

“What? It’s not my fault Amell women appear to be”—Gamlen clears his throat—“erm, quite fertile,” he tries before waving a dismissive hand. “Alright, alright, sorry. It just—”

“—slipped out?” Hawke and Fenris finish in unison, and the tips of his ears warm when she touches his arm as she laughs.

Gamlen rolls his eyes, though the corners of his mouth quirk upwards. “Careful, elf, she’s rubbing off on you. And on that note, I hope you’ve got Elegant to fix you up with some witherstalk, else you’ll end up with a litter of tiny, scowling half-elf mages, like as not,” he chuckles.

As much as Fenris would like to say otherwise, _scowling_ is probably an apt description for his current expression … although the flush reddening Hawke’s face almost makes up for her uncle’s brazen assumptions. “Where’s Archon Hessarian when you need him?” she says, puffing up her cheeks before blowing out a deep breath. “I need to be put out of my misery.”

Sebastian clears his throat as he makes his way to them, eyes glittering like gems. “Hawke, please refrain from making light of the mercy Hessarian the Redeemed showed Andraste in her final moments.”

Hawke’s mouth curls into a crooked smile. “Well, I believe that’s my cue to leave before I get smitten by the Maker’s righteous wrath,” she says before inclining her head. “Gentlemen.”

Gamlen groans, rubbing his forehead as she leaves. “How do you people deal with this day in, day out?”

Fenris throws a glance at Sebastian. “Wine,” he answers, while the prince says, “Prayer.”

Then Fenris follows Hawke’s echoing footfalls to the tall arched doors of the Chantry. After the hall’s thick incense fragrance, the air outside is crisp, almost sharp. He finds her lingering on the steps, surveying passersby as they make their way across the square below: servants running errands, merchants wheeling groaning carts to the market, and noblewomen swapping bits of gossip behind feathered fans, some new conceit imported from Orlais. The First Battle of Kirkwall has been shoved into a corner of the city’s collective memory, where no one dares disturb the thin layer of dust it has managed to gather, and some of the mansions left vacant have since been auctioned off to traders from Nevarra and Tevinter, eager for a base in the Marches.

And so Kirkwall goes on as it always has, moulting its old skin and feeding on its own like a snake eating its tail. Fenris has no love for the city, but with Hawke standing at his elbow and his sister’s letters tucked into a drawer in his room, he sees something like home down the flagstones laid out before the Chantry.

Hawke breaks the silence first. “Thank you for coming with me, Fenris.” A brisk wind tugs at the hem of her shawl as she wraps it tightly around herself. “And for trusting me with this.”

“I should have done so much sooner,” he admits, brushing back the strands of hair the wind just blew over his eyes. Her family was not his to keep, and a belated flush of shame creeps up his neck when it occurs to him just how long he kept this to himself. “I’m sorry.”

“I’m the one who’s sorry. I never meant to dump all these family secrets on you,” she chuckles.

He has come to know the Amells better than his own family, and the irony is not lost on him. But Hawke never shut him out of the dim passageways he uncovered; she kept him by her side as she explored, and somehow, each speck of dust brushed off the memories of the Amell house has been one less thing standing between the two of them.

Until now he had wanted Hawke and Varania to remain separate. He had been content to keep the past and the present apart, two ends of the same road stretching away from the other, but perhaps it is time now to let them intersect, to pinch that winding, dusty ribbon down the middle and fold it onto itself. There will be no undoing it once he does, however, and he needs—he _wants_ Hawke there with him, to light his first few steps down the unknown path he has kept behind himself all this time.

No more secrets, then.

“I know this is hardly the time for this,” he tries, his tongue thick in his mouth, “but I have something to ask of you.”

“Of course. Anything.”

Fenris takes a breath. “Varric helped me track down my sister.” Even without looking at her, he can picture the way her eyebrows shoot up in dark, feathery arches, but she does not interrupt. “Everything Hadriana said was true. She’s a tailor, not a slave. We’ve been exchanging letters for some time now.”

Another thing he owes Hawke. He is grateful for all the fleeting worlds painstakingly conjured from the books she lends him, but none ever felt so much like freedom as when Varric handed him that first letter, bound with a scrap of yarn. Varania’s handwriting—at least he hopes it is hers, if only because it means she must have made a good life for herself if she was taught to read—is better than his own, and he pictured slender fingers handling needles and quills with the same practiced ease.

Had it not been for Hawke, callow, clumsy teacher that she was, would he ever have sought out his sister? He doubts it now.

A smile breaks across Hawke’s face like sunlight between storm clouds. “Fen, this is wonderful news,” she exclaims, clasping his arm, but her fingers loosen around his sleeve when he fails to return her enthusiasm. “You’re worried Danarius knows, aren’t you?”

 _Maybe he has given up. Maybe he has made another one like me_ , he catches himself hoping sometimes, even as the thought fills him with guilt: no one else should suffer what he has.

Not that pride alone would not be reason enough for Danarius to drag Fenris back to Minrathous, anyway. “The longer I go without sign of him, the more I’m convinced he is planning something. I know Varric’s cousin can be trusted, but Danarius’s reach is wide.” He looks at Hawke, watching the wind snarling her hair around her face. “I want you to come with me when I meet her.”

She smiles again. “Of course. I’d be honoured.”

Something warm unfurls in his chest, tender as a bruise. “I will let you know, then.”

Hawke squeezes his hand once before making her way down the stairs of the Chantry, and as her form grows smaller on her path home, the ache blooms in his chest, filling even the space between his ribs.

“You have given her a rare gift,” Sebastian says behind him.

Fenris turns towards his voice. The gates of the Chantry groan as they slide closed, and a waft of warm, incense-scented air blows towards them. “Which is?”

“Some manner of peace.” The sunlight paints russet streaks in his dark hair as Sebastian walks up to him, and makes his enameled breastplate glimmer like the inside of an oyster shell. “She may never forgive the man who took her mother from her, but perhaps burying Lady Revka Amell will make her grief easier to bear.”

“Perhaps,” Fenris concedes, “though I don’t know that he should be forgiven.” Anger rouses beneath his skin when he remembers how powerless he felt that night, Hawke sobbing in his arms, puddles of bloody bathwater all about them. Killing Quentin had been too swift a punishment. “ _I_ haven’t.”

“Forgiveness is for ourselves, Fenris. What we lose shapes us, and we prevail by not letting it bend us out of shape.” Sebastian looks at him, eyes narrowed to thin blue lines against the sun. “You should know that better than anyone.”

He snorts. “I am not like you, able to forgive so easily those who have wronged me.”

“You think I’ve forgiven Lady Harimann for what she has done to my family?” Sebastian asks, not unkindly. “Taking revenge on those mercenaries has not brought them back, or even brought me the peace I sought. That is something I still have to find for myself.”

“No hope for me, then,” Fenris says, bitterness creeping into his voice.

He hopes the wind might carry the words away, but Sebastian turns to him again. “You have accomplished far more than most men, and with far less. You have built yourself up from nothing, and you are helping Hawke do the same, in your own way.” He smiles. “Perhaps forgiving yourself would be a good place to start.”

Fenris says nothing. He lets his gaze roam the square at the bottom of the stairs, something straining at the back of his throat. A gust of wind sweeps the street. There at the end of it, Hawke’s hair flies wild around her head while she claws at the fluttering billow of her shawl. It snaps in the air like a banner until the gale dies down, and he cannot help but smile when she continues on her way home with a self-conscious strut to her walk.

Sebastian clears his throat. “So,” he starts, his tone light, “are you ever going to act on those feelings?”

“Am I that obvious?” Fenris chuckles, face warming.

Sebastian smiles—no, _smirks_ , but at least he does him the favour of not saying it out loud. “It seems to me that no accident brought your paths together. Why keep to the ditch when the road is clear?”

Fenris watches Hawke’s figure shrink in the distance until she disappears around a street corner. The road may be clear now, but he built it himself, gravel, sand, and paving stone by paving stone, and perhaps—perhaps for now he simply wants to see how it glitters in the sun while he catches his breath.

He has waited so long already, he can afford to wait for just the right moment to take that first step.

“Soon, I believe,” he throws over his shoulder as he starts down the stairs. “There is one last thing that must be done before then.”

* * *

“Not a word,” Isabela warns when Fenris spots her behind Corff’s bar a fortnight later, hunched over a tankard of ale.

The last he saw of her was her back before she slipped into the night; around her ashes and sparks rose from the smouldering city, while Hawke still lay on the blood-soaked carpet of the Keep’s throne room, gasping for air around the Arishok’s blade. Fenris waits for anger to burn through the initial surprise of finding Isabela there, nursing a drink as though she has not been gone for years, but he feels nothing of the sort. Nothing he can name with certainty, even, except it teases the corners of his mouth into a smile.

He makes his way around the bar to join her, careful to give the drunken patrons a wide berth. “Misplaced another priceless relic?” he says, earning himself an exaggerated roll of her rum-coloured eyes.

“Very funny.”

He laughs under his breath as he motions at Corff for a drink, then leans back against the bar next to her, propping himself up on his elbows. “Does Hawke know you’re back?”

Another eyeroll. “As if the bloody Champion of Kirkwall would give two shits,” she retorts.

“You’d be surprised. She misses you.”

Isabela drains her tankard and blows out the same deep sigh as on the rare occasions someone outplays her at Wicked Grace. She pushes herself up to look at him, her eyes level with his. “Fine, say your piece. Get it out of the way.”

A small, healed scar rives her jaw; turquoise and gold adorn her neck and ears, gaudy as ever, and her dark curls are burned with sun and salt. Her eyes are older now, and not just because of the small lines fanning out from the corners: some shadow, some weight seems to anchor her gaze somewhere deep inside her, steady against the fickle wind of her whims.

Fenris would have had much to tell her three years ago. Maybe even a fortnight ago. Looking at her now, however, he doubts he has anything to say that she has not already told herself, and decides to release the moorings of his old grudges.

“I’m glad you’ve returned,” he simply says, smiling.

Isabela blinks, then shakes her head, eyes to the ceiling, her jewelry tinkling around her face and tossing shards of torchlight onto the grimy bar. “Keep this up, Fenris, and I’m leaving again,” she replies, but something softens in her stance, and the same easy, familiar smirk as always hooks her mouth again.

He drops a handful of coppers in Corff’s palm and accepts his ale with a nod of acknowledgement. “Well, ask me again in a few moments. I might have changed my mind by then.”

She throws her head back and laughs; then they clink their tankards together with the sharp, metallic ring of pieces falling into place. As much as things have changed, they haven’t at all. Varric joins them while Isabela is trying to guess the colour of Fenris’s underclothes, and every card flicked in the ensuing round of Wicked Grace chips away at the past three years until she might as well have left the day before.

Fenris breaks into a grin when his turns out to be the winning hand. “I win.”

“Dropped your nerve overboard somewhere on Rialto Bay, Rivaini?” Varric says as he gathers the cards back into a deck. “Your first game back in Kirkwall, and you lose to the most honest player I’ve ever known.”

“So did you, Varric, so don’t get cocky,” Isabela replies between swigs of ale, watching Fenris as he sweeps his winnings towards himself. Her hand darts across the table to grab his arm, and his face grows warm when he realises that the scarlet handkerchief has caught her attention, still banding his wrist where he does not even see it anymore. “Does this mean someone _found_ his nerve while I was away?” she asks, then rolls her eyes when he tugs his arm out of her grasp. “Pfft, never mind. I’ve got my answer.”

“Hey, now, Rivaini,” Varric says as he riffles the cards, chuckling. “Can’t have _happiness_ get in the way of that brooding image he’s cultivated for so long.”

A quip, nothing more, but it rings with more truth than Fenris would like. “I’m getting there,” he defends himself, readjusting the favour around his wrist.

Isabela snorts. “Bet you anything the smallclothes match the favour. Maybe there’s even a little Amell crest stitched on them,” she adds, bursting out laughing when his face somehow becomes even hotter. “Well, now your _face_ matches it, that’s for sure.”

Varric’s laughter joins hers, Fenris groans, and the night ends the same way as always: Isabela wins all but the one round, then loses interest in them when a traveler armed with knives and a low-cut bodice enters the tavern. “Ooh, nice pair of _daggers_ ,” she says before sauntering over to the newcomer, leaving them to the scatter of cards and half-drained mugs.

When she shows no sign of returning, Fenris starts gathering his meagre winnings with a yawn, while Varric reaches into his belt and extracts a letter. “Not sure what you’re waiting for, elf,” he says as he hands it to him, a smile tugging at his mouth, “but for your sake, I hope this is it.”

Fenris keeps Varania’s letter tucked into his belt as he makes his way home. Each time he has received a letter from her, he has only allowed himself to read it once ensconced in the safety and secrecy of the old mansion. Tonight, however, he gives in to his hammering pulse and stops under a lamppost halfway up the stairs to Hightown.

He unseals the letter. Moths flutter about the lantern above him, sending flitting shadows on the paper. It is only a few lines long, as were the others before. Unsurprising, when she had thought him dead at first, and probably suspects a trap as much as he did.

 _I thank you again for the coin,_ the letter reads in her neat, unadorned handwriting. _I will be leaving Minrathous in a fortnight aboard the Carasthia, set to dock in Kirkwall on the twenty-sixth of Frumentum._

He reads it again, then again. He only puts it away when footfalls draw close, lest he has to make a run for it, but the swaying, humming figure that passes him by does not even notice him.

Fenris resumes his walk home, then pauses before the solemn, shadowy façade of the Amell estate. The fresh, green scent of the vines wreathing its imposing columns tickles his nose. It is past midnight, but the window of Hawke’s bedchamber glows like a beacon in the night, curtains still open, and flickers once with her silhouette. He tries to stamp down the urge to turn up on her doorstep at this hour, but he has so much to tell her between Isabela’s return and Varania’s letter, and the only thing that would make his day even better is her, smiling at him.

He makes his way to the gates of her estate, and catches himself smiling as he walks.

* * *

The last days of his ten-year-long wait crumble away like sand under his feet, and the twenty-sixth of Frumentum—“Harvestmere,” Fenris amends at Hawke’s blank stare—creeps up on him all too quickly.

The walk to the Hanged Man that day has the strange, eerie quality of a dream. The streets whoosh past him in a blurred haze of colour and noise, bright flashes here and there flaking off like froth on a wave. Merchants call out to him as though from behind a heavy woolen curtain; wafts of day-old fish and Rivaini spices tickle his nose, there then gone, and stalls of blades and cheap jewelry catch the light, sending Hawke’s hound bounding after the scattered flecks of sun.

Next to him, Hawke babbles all the way down the stairs from Hightown to Lowtown. Her voice fills the air, and her hands, the space before her, but even as Fenris clings to her words, they keep slipping away into the warm, dusty air.

“... turns out that the Knight-Lieutenant had been smuggling lyrium in his smalls all along, and _that’s_ why Maker’s Bark had taken such an interest in his crotch,” Hawke is saying as they stop beneath the tavern’s namesake swinging overhead. A rare dab of carmine accentuates the pleasant shape of her mouth, Fenris notices. “The Chantry should really consider an order of mabari Templars to keep the human Templars in check. _Ser_ Maker’s Bark. It has a certain ring to it, no?”

Maker’s Bark answers with an enthusiastic bark, wagging his nubbin of a tail. Hawke raises expectant eyes at Fenris, and he realises after a moment that she expects him to say something. “Sorry,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I missed what you were saying.”

“Piffle, as always,” she replies with a grin before brushing the hair out of his face and rubbing the skin between his eyebrows with her thumb. “Try not to scowl as much.” Fenris forces his expression to relax, only realising now how tense he is. Hawke nods, satisfied. “There. You put every other man in Kirkwall to shame. Except _you_ , of course,” she adds when Maker’s Bark noses her palm with a small whine. She bends down to rub the hound’s jowls, earning herself several enthusiastic licks of his large, pink tongue. “Who’s the most handsome boy in the Free Marches? You are! Yes, you are!”

A smile stretches across his mouth despite himself at the sight, and the knots in his stomach loosen when she returns it and asks, “Ready?” She wipes the dog slobber off her face with her sleeve, then breathes a resigned sigh when she finds the cuff streaked with rouge.

Fenris chuckles. “As I ever will be.”

Hawke holds the door open for him, then follows him into the familiar meld of spilled ale and old, sunlit wood. It is quiet, this time of day. Only a few stragglers remain, spread about the tavern, while the usual row of regulars is seated by the bar, nursing drinks under hunched shoulders. Corff is whistling to himself, greeting them with a simple nod of his head while he gives a mug a perfunctory wipe with a rag; Hawke calls out to him in answer, but her voice and the click of her hound’s nails on the floorboards melt away somewhere behind Fenris.

He knows Varania at once, the way his hand knows how to swing his sword. She sits alone in a cloud of swirling dust motes, fiery hair gathered at the back of her head, eyebrows a shade darker furrowing at her untouched glass of wine. The instant his eyes come to rest on her, a glint of her memory breaks through the surface, somehow spared by the ritual: Varania bent over a flame cupped in her hands, russet strands of hair and the smooth planes of her face gilded with fire, raising green eyes turned dark amber in the light to smile at him.

Fenris only notices that he has stopped when Hawke shoves him forward. “Varania?” he asks, but the question is superfluous, and her name brings forth a fresh wellspring of memories. The tart, sweet fragrance of a basket of ripe oranges in summer, fingers sticky with their juice, a flash of red hair like the tail of a falling star, her laughter and her light, thin body when he catches her by the waist, laughing “ _you’re it!_ ” as he spins her around once—

When she lifts her face, he finds himself staring into the same eyes as his own. Emotions flit through her gaze like autumn leaves in a whirlwind, too many, too swift to name.

In the end she settles for a mask of quiet, distant resignation. “So it is you,” Varania says in the flat, detached tone he himself has used so often as an imperial slave.

“I remember you,” he says, breathless.

She arches one skeptical eyebrow, the expression achingly familiar. “I thought you did not remember anything.”

“I do now. We used to play together in our master’s yard.” Even he can hear the marvel in his own voice. “You called me—”

Laughter again, and the sting of scraped knees, and bare arms and legs rolling through the air in a cartwheel and _look what I can do—_

“Leto. The name Mother gave you.”

Behind him, Hawke’s breath catches in her throat. Fenris smells tuberose and neroli camphor, feels the parchment texture of worn, scarred hands, and words rise to his mouth into a jumble while he stands there voiceless, trying to choose the right ones. “You—”

“Fenris,” Hawke says, and something in her voice sends a chill down his spine. Her hound raises his hackles, an ominous growl seeping between his bared teeth, and Varania drops her head in her hands as Fenris jerks his head in the direction of Hawke’s gaze.

It has happened before, too many times to count. Pale eyes in a crowd, a certain gait and posture, a voice jutting through all the others in the market, and Fenris finds his senses honed as a blade, every muscle in his body drawn taut while fear screams at him to _run._ So far, the second look has always proved him wrong. Nothing more than a stranger of similar mien or build, or the remnants of a dream shattered as he wakes with his heart in his mouth.

But Fenris does not wake, and Danarius does not fade back into an obscured, ten-year-old memory, washed away in a rush of relief. He descends the creaking, wobbling boards of the staircase with the same dignified bearing as always, as though these were the steps of the Arcanist Hall in Minrathous and not just another dingy tavern in the Free Marches. The thick, woolen hem of his cloak and robes slithers down the wooden boards, and Fenris feels an absurd clench of revulsion: the Hanged Man could not be any filthier, but now it is _tainted_ , his too-few, treasured memories now defiled by the worst of them all.

His fingers go numb; a grey buzz fills his skull like a swarm of locusts fills the sky, and the tavern lists and cracks around him, entire strips of the Hanged Man dropping into darkness until all he sees is the cold, contented smile on his master’s mouth.

“My little Fenris,” Danarius says, and his voice has not changed in ten years: genteel, honeyed, sticking to his skin like ooze.

Out of the corner of his eye, Fenris sees the dozen patrons scattered around the tavern rise to their feet. Tevinters, he realises too late. He should have known them for what they are the instant he laid eyes on them.

Varania has not moved an inch. She stares down at the swirls and knots in the dirty, greasy wood of her table, and crimson washes over his vision, bloodying the sight of her.

“ _You_ ,” Fenris snarls. “You brought him here.”

She lifts her eyes then, and he hates that now— _now_ he remembers her looking at him before, a hundred, a thousand times. Would that he had left that memory to crumble into dust behind him while he continued on alone, as always he has.

What a fool he was.

“I’m sorry, Leto,” Varania says.

Fenris clenches his hands into fists, fingernails biting into his palms. “I will crush the heart in your chest if it’s the last thing I do.”

On anyone else’s face, Danarius’s smile might have been pleasant. “Is it not as I’ve told you before, my pet? A shame it should have taken so long for you to figure it out.” His gaze slides along Hawke’s form, and Fenris’s vision pulses red again. She should not have to suffer even the vile touch of his eyes on her. “My, my, the Champion of Kirkwall herself. I should be thankful that Fenris’s skill has not been wasted on one of the”—he makes a vague gestures with one jeweled hand—“lesser elements of this city.”

“At last we meet,” Hawke replies, and under the affable veneer the contempt in her voice could rust blades. “I’ve heard _so much_ about you, I’ve been eagerly awaiting the chance to make you choke on my staff since.”

He laughs under his breath. “Such impudence does not become a woman as lovely as yourself, Champion. I do understand your unwillingness to let go of a lad of such … varied talents, however.”

Shame burns its way through the rage. Fenris looks away, not wanting to see Hawke’s features contort in disgust, but she takes a step towards Danarius, knuckles white around her staff. “Fenris is a free man.”

The heat in her voice is enough to set things alight, but Danarius chuckles, unimpressed. “Yet how quick you are to speak in his place,” he says, as always finding the one frayed thread to unravel his foe. Hawke’s composure cracks apart, ruffling the Veil around her body.

“Shut up, Danarius,” Fenris retorts. Even through the brilliant flashes of anger beating against his ribcage, the thrill of disrespecting his former master curls up to flutter beneath his heart. “If you need to hear it from my mouth, then here it is: I’m no longer your slave.”

Danarius’s upper lip quivers. “You’ve picked up some unfortunate habits from the Champion, it appears. We’re going to have to break those.”

If Hawke had cast a spell then, Danarius would have felt the Fade shirr around the first burgeoning intention, a riposte ready at his fingertips—but whether by prescience or sheer unbridled rage, she does not resort to magic.

Instead she hauls her staff and spins it once at arm’s length.

And _that_ Danarius does not see coming.

The butt cracks against his temple, so loud in the late-morning stillness even Fenris starts at the sound. Danarius sways on his feet and stumbles, clutching his own staff for support. Everyone else in the room holds their breath.

“Not if I break your face first,” Hawke pants, eyes glittering with a mad light.

A surprised little laugh echoes from within one of his hirelings’ helmet. Danarius’s face snaps up, twisted almost beyond recognition, colourless eyes blazing. Fenris’s stomach twists in pleasure at the thin trail of blood that slides down his eye and cheekbone, staining his fingertips.

Whatever bleeds can die, and whatever dies, Fenris can kill.

Everything happens at once. Burnished plumes of magic rise from the blood on Danarius’s fingers; shades claw their way through the Veil while his hirelings heft their swords and daggers. One motion has Fenris’s greatsword unsheathed and sweeping through the air to cut down the closest Tevinter, while Maker’s Bark lunges at another, pinning him to the floor and tearing out his throat with one bite. Hawke darts out of an arrow’s trajectory, plucks a table off the floor with a wave of magic, and tosses it across the room. It slams into two of Danarius’s henchmen with a crack of splintered wood and bones, clearing the way to the door. “Corff!” she shouts at the gawking innkeep. “Get the hell out of here and get the guard!”

By the time Corff and his patrons escape, the tavern has turned into a welter of blades and blood. Bones crunch under Fenris’s greatsword; the twisted flesh of a shade dissolves to black flecks around his blade. Hearts burst into his fist, spraying blood into his mouth, but he spits it out and keeps swinging his sword. Everything falls second to the familiar rhythm of battle. All that matters is carving himself a path through Danarius’s henchmen and presenting him with his own fucking heart.

His eyes dart to his former master between each parry and thrust. Danarius deflects Hawke’s raining fire with quick, impatient flicks of his fingers, mouth screwed to a thin line. The past seven years have greyed his hair and beard, sagged the skin of his cheeks and neck, deepened the lines scoring his brow and the corner of his eyes, but Fenris can still read him as well as ever.

Danarius did not expect them to fight.

The thought pleases him, even beneath the pulsing flare of battle. Fenris has fought at Hawke’s side longer than he ever did at Danarius’s. It took him months to learn to fight _with_ someone, not least of all Hawke, whose magic is wildfires and thunderstorms, nothing like the magister’s controlled, spearpoint spells. But now he trusts her voice as much as the long fiery arms of her spells; now he knows what each glance, each nod means, never hesitates when she tells him to fall back or turn around. “Behind you!” she calls out now, and Fenris whirls around. His greatsword strikes plate with enough force to send his foe to his knees, gasping for air. A thrust aimed between his helmet and gorget has the man toppling face first to the floorboards.

When Fenris meets Danarius’s eyes again, it is written across his face: he is _enraged_ , furious to see his precious pet trusting another mage to watch his back, letting someone else’s voice guide him while their bodies circle one another with the swift, fluid movements of running water.

The last shade melts away into a putrid mist after being struck with a fork of lightning; Maker’s Bark hamstrings another guard with a bite, and Fenris only has to thrust his sword downward to sever her spine. Yet the Tevinter guards keep coming, somehow. They lunge for them even as blood spurts out of their wounds, their weapons forgotten on the sticky floor of the Hanged Man. A flaming mass hobbles at the edge of his vision. One of Danarius’s henchmen is on _fire_ , Fenris realises, clumps of burning hair falling off his head while his face blisters and melts, and yet he hurls himself at Hawke, flames rising from his outstretched arms. She scurries on top of a table, hitting him with the butt of her staff.

Fenris is halfway across the room when the burning guard collapses to the ground, the fletching of a crossbow bolt sticking out of his eye socket. “Need a hand?” a familiar voice calls from the top of the staircase.

Hawke laughs. “Did the walking corpses give it away?” she replies while Fenris helps her off the table.

Danarius’s eyes snap to the stairs half a second too late. A glint of silver flies across the room, and a knife sinks hilt-deep into his shoulder, wrenching a cry out of him. Next to Varric, Isabela fishes another blade out of her boot and twirls it between her fingers. “So, Fenris, going to introduce us?” she lilts.

“No need,” Fenris replies, smirking. “He is a dead man.”

Danarius pulls the knife out of his shoulder with a hiss, a crimson stain spreading on the sleeve of his robes. Isabela is already at the bottom of the stairs, daggers plunged between an undead guard’s shoulder blades; a wintry mist is gathering at the end of Hawke’s staff, and a sweep of her arm traps three of them in crackling layers of ice. Fenris swings his greatsword into a low arc to incapacitate two more, thankful for the burst of cold air against the sweat dripping down his neck. Maker’s Bark snaps a guard’s shin with his jaws while Varric releases a new bolt into another hireling’s chest.

The Tevinter flies back to crash into Varania’s table in a heap of broken wood. She presses closer to Danarius, her back against the wall, eyes huge and blank. After what she has done, the traitorous bitch has the gall to look _frightened_.

Danarius first, then, and her next, Fenris tells himself, and their deaths already taste like honey on his tongue.

The guards fall faster than Danarius can raise them now. He turns his attention to the Veil instead, slashing through it with a spell like a rusted blade. Fenris’s markings scream awake as gleaming black claws tear through the very air in front of him. A smell, like low tide and overripe fruit, billows after the emerging shade, but he swallows through it and brings his greatsword down.

The creature howls; the bone of its shoulder cracks under the blade, and ichor spurts from the gash, hissing as it hits the floorboards. Only a few strands of gristle keep the arm attached to the shoulder, and still it swipes at him in retaliation. Talons gouge into the meat of his arm, but the pain is dull, distant as though it was someone else’s. Fenris hacks at the mockery of flesh until it breaks apart, black shreds drifting through the air in grotesque imitation of the usual swirls of golden dust.

Only a few paces separate him from Danarius now. Fresh burns mottle the magister’s hand and the side of his face, and his sleeve hangs bloodied and charred, the gold-thread trim frayed and singed. Something like fear widens his eyes at Fenris’s approach.

Fenris will treasure the memory if it is the last thing he sees.

Danarius seizes Varania by the wrist, and she stumbles in front of him. Fenris almost laughs. If he can kill the both of them in one swing, then all the better. His breath comes in short spurts; his blood rushes into his ears, drowning out the sweet song of Isabela’s daggers and the familiar thump of Hawke’s staff hitting the floor. She flings a guard across the room, and the man floats through the air for the span of a breath before his spine snaps against a ceiling beam. Fenris is _so close_. He lifts his sword overhead, glorying in the moment.

He sees the knife too late.

Danarius brings it down, slicing Varania’s arm open from elbow to wrist. Blood unfurls from the wound in red ribbons, writhing in the air; the stench of rust and spoiled meat rolls into the Hanged Man, and all the residual spell energies in the room ebb away like the sea recedes before a tidal wave, coalescing into a coil of raw power in Danarius’s palm.

Agony crackles along the fullers of his markings, and a blinding light fills the room as though the midday sun had fallen into it. In a half-forgotten dream, somewhere far away, Hawke screams his name.

He finds himself on all fours. His greatsword lies on the floor next to him, the blade still webbed black with ichor. When at last he gathers the strength to lift his head, he finds himself looking into Varania’s eyes, green and huge in the middle of her ashen face—the very same eyes that stare back at him in the mirror. She kneels at her master’s feet like a faithful dog, clasping the gash on her arm. Were it not for the thick surge of hate filling him to the brim, he might have felt a petty thrill of vindication at the sight. Whatever Danarius has promised her, she will be nothing but expendable in the Imperium.

“I’d have given you _everything_ ,” he chokes out. He cannot name whatever passes behind her eyes—nor does he care to—but he refuses to let her walk away wearing the same eyes as he, so he reaches for her heart, her throat, her face, whatever he can tear out first.

His markings flare, then go dead. Fenris tries to steel himself against what he knows is coming, but Danarius’s magic spills inside him, black and slick as tar—the worst violation of all—groping for a hold on his mind. Fenris’s hand drops back to the floor, prickling and numb. Somewhere behind him, Isabela curses under her breath, panting.

“Now, now, my pet. Behave yourself,” Danarius says while the slippery fingers of the compulsion prod the inside of his skull. “Champion, I suggest you and your friends turn back now.”

“Like hell I will. Let him go, you piece of shit,” Hawke retorts, voice frayed to its raw edges.

Varric arms his crossbow, the well-oiled mechanism snicking pleasantly, but Danarius flicks his fingers and the weapon clatters to the floor. Isabela and Hawke call Varric’s name in unison as he groans in pain. Someone—Isabela, Fenris decides—shuffles across the room.

“I apologise, Master Tethras,” Danarius starts, “but there was no need to get yourself involved. This concerns solely the Champion and myself. I was hoping we could put an end to this barbaric display and come to an agreement instead.”

Hawke’s staff whooshes through the miasma of blood and death that now fills the Hanged Man. “Fuck you,” she spits.

 _No_ , Fenris says, but all that breaches his lips is a wordless gasp. It is a trap, an obvious one at that—make her think she stands a chance—exactly the kind into which she always rushes headlong, and so she does.

Magic gathers to her like the incipient lightning of a storm cloud; rather than leap at its touch, his brands remain unresponsive. His fingers burn for the grip of his greatsword, but even if his fatigued mind could break the compulsion now, he does not trust his hand not to betray him, not with Danarius still flooding the crevices of his mind.

“A shame,” Danarius simpers.

Fenris shoves back against his mind long enough to lift his eyes. Above him, Danarius holds one hand splayed out. Torchlight fans out between his fingers in odd, wayward angles, broken by the tendrils of power that twist around his palm, caroming against the jewels adorning his knuckles. Varania muffles a scream when blood starts pouring out of her arm again, frothing between her fingers. To Fenris’s horror, his own wounds bleed freely, too, crimson rivulets running down his arms and face and into his eyes. The corpses scattered at the edge of his vision shudder as the lifeforce lingering in their bodies is siphoned out of them, flowing into Danarius’s spell like its many tributaries flow into the great Minanter River.

Danarius closes his hand into a fist. The great fiery gouts of Hawke’s spell fizzle out to ash and smoke, blowing past him harmless as winnowed chaff. Her staff clatters to the floor like a lifeless stick of wood, and the raw, latent power in all the blood spilled on the floor of the Hanged Man comes loose.

He smiles, then Hawke starts screaming.

The noise is so inhuman, so unlike any sound Hawke has ever made Fenris scarcely knows what it is at first. It rends the air, a hoarse, toneless wail that settles in all the hollows inside him like a winter wind. Tendrils of magic force his head back in her direction, and Fenris cannot even close his eyes as he watches the blood in her body answering the call of Danarius’s magic. She hangs in midair, her head lolling on her neck and her eyes rolling back in their sockets, while blood pours out of everywhere at once: from her eyes like tears, her nose, the corners of her hanging mouth. It rises to the surface of her skin and seeps out of her pores to coat her skin with a shining layer of scarlet. Dark droplets fall from her fingers to splatter the floor, while a hideous flower blooms crimson on the front of her shirt, and the sharp tang of rusted copper rises as her scream becomes soundless.

“Look at your Champion, Fenris,” Danarius purrs. Varric and Isabela watch, eyes wide; Maker’s Bark whimpers before the sight. “How weak, how _pathetic_. How could you not turn feral again, with this feeble little bitch as your mistress? _You_ are special, my little wolf, and what you need is a firm hand to guide you. Come, and we can undo all the ways she has failed you.”

“Fenris,” Hawke gurgles, the words wet in her throat. “ _Don’t_.”

His eyes sting, unblinking, as Fenris stares at the bleeding shape hanging in the air. _You should have run,_ he wants to tell her, the thought floating on a bitter, rueful current. _I am not worth it_.

He never wanted this. Freedom, yes, but at what cost? What would it be worth without Hawke at his side? Without the sweet shimmer of her laughter illuminating the darkest corners of his heart? What would freedom be worth defiled from the first, knowing that he sacrificed what he holds most sacred upon its altar?

Nothing. He has seen it in his dreams, after all: Warden-Commander Amell, whose heart still beats but has long turned barren as blighted plains; her mother Revka, who fed herself to the Waking Sea, whose sorrow tore a hole so deep into the fabric of the world her husband fell headlong into it; Fausten, who emptied the great coffers of his house to buy justice for his son; Leandra, who forsook all for love and lost twice as much; the Lady Bethann and the Lord Aristide, who chose name and honour over their daughter, and whose regret corroded all they held dear.

Three years of dreaming about the Amells, and there is no clarity, no answer as their scion’s blood pools on the Hanged Man’s filthy floorboards. Was it all just a warning, then? That when the last in an ages-old line marked by loss and sacrifice would have to make her own choice, of course she would let Danarius empty her heart’s blood rather than give Fenris up? That by tying his heart to hers, he would only curse himself with the inevitability of this moment?

The compulsion pulls him to his feet, calling for her heart to be torn out. His movements are halting, jerky; his legs, shaky as a newborn foal’s. The gloating pleasure coming off Danarius envelops him as he takes one step, then another.

Fenris feels it, then, familiar, beloved: a mote of Hawke’s magic woven into scarlet silk, a pinprick of sun shining through gossamer. It beckons to dreams and memories stilled in the Fade, and the Veil flutters as they wreathe together, whirling around his wrist. His markings stir awake at their touch, soft as a bird’s wing, to catch them in flight: dreams and memories of the Amells all, from the heady fragrance of lilies to the last bloom on the rosebush, bright cherries hanging off twin sets of ears, dizzying turns on a glittering ballroom floor, chestnut curls coming loose after a long day.

And last, inconsequential save for being what Fenris holds dearest, the promise of laughter on lips stained purple with Aggregio Pavali.

The Veil shakes loose, welcoming, wide open like Hawke’s arms, and all he has to do is step into her embrace. His markings rouse under her light, so brilliant even the blackness of the compulsion cannot keep its hold on him, and its yoke flakes off like ash, burned away by the lucent glow of the lyrium.

When the Hanged Man turns back into itself, Fenris looks down to see Danarius’s heart sitting in his palm, and the outrage in his pale eyes before the last speck of light goes out of them.

He drops the heart, unseeing, his sister a blur of blood and flame as he turns back on his heel and runs to Hawke. The spell-strands of blood magic woven around her unravel, and she crumbles into his arms. She breathes, for now. Maker’s Bark limps to his mistress, a pair of arrows stuck into his withers, his fur clotted with blood. He whines, nosing at her cheek. Her eyes crack open, tears gouging channels into the blood caked on her face. “Hey,” she slurs, the words thick on her chapped lips. “How does it feel to be free at last?”

Her hand is in his—he had not noticed—small and fragile, dried-up blood outlining the half-moons of her fingernails. He opens his mouth to tell her to be quiet, but all he manages is a sharp intake of air, almost a sob, as though he had been holding his breath for too long.

Instead Fenris bends his forehead to her knuckles, then presses a kiss to them, blood be damned.

“You weren’t kidding, elf,” Varric groans while Isabela helps him to his feet despite the sheen of sweat covering his sallow face and the uncharacteristic quiver of his voice. Whatever foul magic Danarius has worked on him must have been nothing short of harrowing, but Varric still musters a smile as he limps towards them. “Hang in there, Hawke, alright? We’ll get you to Blondie.”

But Hawke is out already, slumped against Fenris’s chest. Her pulse is thready, and the bloodsoaked mass of her hair drips down his neck as he gathers her up in his arms. _Please don’t die_ , he almost says, but it would make no difference, so he takes one stumbling, painful step towards the door of the Hanged Man—

—and it swings open, silhouettes marching into the tavern: the City Guard, sunlight glinting off the edges of their armours and helmets like multifaceted jewels, and in their wake, Anders, the black-dyed feathers of his pauldrons vanishing into the brightness that spills into the Hanged Man. A pair of guardsmen reel on the threshold at the sight—a flower of corpses and carnage, the broken Champion of Kirkwall its bloodied heart—and likely at the stench, too. To his credit, Anders rushes to Hawke, hands already aglow.

Varric sweeps the candle stumps and empty tankards off the one lone unsmashed table; Fenris lays Hawke down onto it, obeying Anders without even hearing him. Bodies crowd her unconscious form while voices burst around the table and ricochet in all directions. The flame of Aveline’s hair blazes into view. Fenris stands there, helpless, watching as blood trickles out the corner of Hawke’s mouth, until Isabela calls out to him from half a world away.

“What do you want to do with her, tiger?” she says, her blade at Varania’s throat.

Varania looks resigned to her fate, her chin held up high above the dagger’s edge. No one in this room will show her sympathy, and she knows it. _No one but Hawke_ , Fenris thinks, but Hawke is unconscious, a healing spell away from bleeding out.

“Why?” he asks Varania. The question is barbed, catching at his throat. “Why go to him?”

Specks of sconce light waver on the surface of her eyes. “I had no choice.”

“Of course you had a choice,” he spits back, hands balling into fists. “ _You_ were free.”

“In name and little else!” she snaps, and Isabela tightens her hold around her. Varania winces but makes no sound, even as a thin trail of blood runs down her exposed throat. “You have no idea what it was like, what I’ve had to do since Mother died.” She closes her eyes, then takes a deep, shuddering breath before looking at him again. “He was going to make me his apprentice. It was my only chance.”

A red haze falls over his eyes; the room whirls once around him. Above Varania’s shoulder, Isabela snickers, her face twisted in contempt.

He glares at Danarius’s corpse, a gaping hole where that withered, dried-out heart of his had been, then back at Varania. She swallows hard under Isabela’s blade. “ _I_ gave you another chance,” he reminds her as he advances towards her, markings flaring to life. “And instead of taking it, you would’ve sold me out to him, knowing full well what he’s done?” The glow of the lyrium, pale and cold as steel, limns the fright chiseling her face, but Fenris feels no satisfaction at the sight, nothing except the blood burning beneath his skin. “And because of you, Hawke is—”

“Fen.”

His name is naught more than a breath, almost drowned by the blood pounding into his ears, but it cracks through him like lightning. Hawke’s fingers are stretched out towards him atop the table; a hint of sapphire gleams between the long shadows of her lashes, stuck together with dried-out blood.

He is at her side within a heartbeat, Varania forgotten. The light of Anders’s healing spell glimmers over the blood crusting her skin, turning it the colour of bruised blackcurrants. A lone tear escapes the corner of her eye and trickles down the bridge of her nose to patter against the tabletop. Fenris tugs the gauntlet off his hand to brush her cheek; her lips part at his touch, but cannot form words, and when her lids flutter closed again, dread rises inside him like a winter storm, quenching at once the anger blazing inside him.

Aveline’s eyes snap to Anders’s face. “Is she—?”

The mage uncorks a vial of lyrium with his teeth and drains it in one gulp. “She’ll be fine,” he says, glancing at Fenris once, “no thanks to you.”

The floorboards list under Fenris’s feet, and the storm inside him abates, pieces of him scattered in its winds. Varric pats his hand once, but the touch feels distant. Everything does, even Varania. It seemed so important to know her at first, and later, to _kill_ her. After what she has done, she would deserve no less than having the heart plucked out of her chest like a flower and lain at Hawke’s feet— _can’t go wrong with roses_ , he hears Alistair say again, and a bitter laugh almost tears out of him—but his anger is spent, as dead as his markings were under the compulsion.

Around his wrist, the red of Hawke’s favour is lost amidst all the blood she has bled. Spilling more in her name would accomplish little when she is drenched in it already, and he would have to let go of her hand …

Varania’s unflinching voice rises behind him. “You wanted the markings, you know. You competed for them, and with the boon had Mother and I freed. But looking at you now, I think you got the better end of the bargain.”

He looks at her, then. Eyes just like his, flecked with shards of light. The same as their mother’s, he knows without knowing how, her memory long gone, trampled to dust under the scouring Tevinter sun. None of it matters anymore. They are strangers now, entire worlds and lifetimes stretching miles long between them, even as they stand in the same room.

Her words fall into the chasm of her betrayal with nary an echo, taking with them the last scraps of dreams and hopes that rested upon her. “You could have been part of it,” Fenris says.

“Leto, I—”

“ _Leto_ is not my name,” he cuts her off, turning back to Hawke. Nothing matters but her breath now, shallow though it is, and her hand in his.

This time, Varania says nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Isabela shrug and shove her towards the door.

Then she slips into the light, unseen.

“Come, let’s get some air,” Donnic says, sounding as though he were underwater. “Hawke’s in good hands.”

The words scatter in the air, a butterfly’s wings breaking apart, and Fenris watches them flit about the sunlight. The next hour or so only returns to him in fragments, long afterwards: a glass of amber liqueur shoved into his trembling hand, threatening to slosh over the brim. Aveline tugging Hawke’s boots off her feet, and a single, bloodsoaked sock hanging off her toes. Corff swaying in the doorway, a handkerchief pressed to his nose.

Fenris does not recall the walk back to Hightown. He returns to his senses as though from a dream, standing under the caved roof of his foyer. He wanted to be alone, but now that he is, he feels as hollow as all the great, high-ceilinged rooms in this stolen manor he claimed as his own. His gauntlets jangle to the ground when he yanks them off, the echo leaping across the room a few times. Danarius is dead, and his sister betrayed him, sold him out in hopes of becoming a magister herself.

 _Better end of the bargain_. A sound not quite like a laugh tears out of him. He wonders if she would say the same had it been her skin enduring the lyrium ritual. Her throat wearing Danarius’s collar, her body with unwanted, uninvited hands creeping across it, whispering _property_ as they went. Chattel. _Thing_. Something like rage flares in his chest and then is gone, burning out nothing. Useless, then, like his forgiveness. He sought answers for so long, and he got them, sunk into him like knives and twisted by his own sister’s hand: he _wanted_ the filthy markings etched into his skin, fought for them, and watching them now, glinting in the sunlight flooding the foyer like the edge of a honed blade, he regrets not letting Danarius rip them off his corpse after all.

Fenris has no one left. No one left to blame, even.

The last of his strength leaves him. He collapses to his knees on the broken tiles of the mansion; tufts of weeds prickle his palms as he stares down at the small mushrooms clustered in the cracks. Dead. Danarius is _dead_. At long last the past ten years crumble to dust and slip from his shoulders; for the first time he feels their weight for what it is, and as it comes loose so do all the knots and chains inside him. One sharp, dry sob breaks out of him, then another, then ten years of tears held back, and he cries like he has not since the first year after he woke up, nameless, and looked into his master’s cold grey eyes for the first time.

 _Dead_ , and now Fenris has nothing, no one, not even an enemy—

No. Those were his friends fighting for him in the Hanged Man, more family than Varania will ever be. He has them, and he has Hawke, who fought for him, who bled for him, who—

—who hit Danarius square in the face with her staff.

Laughter bubbles out of him once, loosening his throat at the memory. The disbelief, the _outrage_ widening his former master’s eyes as he stumbled, mouth hanging open; the dignified bearing that used to part crowds before him and chill the blood of slaves and magisters alike, blown to smithereens by a tavern girl from the Fereldan countryside—and before he knows it, Fenris _is_ laughing, even as tears still run down his face.

When he lets himself fall into bed, scrubbed clean of Danarius’s blood, sleep comes to him gentle and swift, and for once Fenris welcomes the dreams he knows it carries under its starry wings.

* * *

“Mother,” Hawke blurts out, looking up from her needlework, “you never said what made you change your mind about Fenris.”

Leandra keeps her gaze on her own embroidery hoop, sure fingers plying her needle through the taut fabric of a kerchief. “Whatever do you mean?” she asks, a little too innocently.

“You weren’t too happy with me when you found out about him, as I recall.” It’s an understatement, of course. They’d yelled at each other from across the foyer, the sort of knife-sharp remarks only people who love each other can wield. “What changed your mind?”

Her mother’s shoulders lift with a deep, quiet breath; her needle slows. “Your father,” she replies finally, the quiver of a smile full of longing and memories there at the corners of her mouth. “Malcolm would have told me to give him a chance. You’re becoming more and more like him with time, you know,” she continues, emotion clouding the soft velvet of her voice. “Always willing to see the good in people.”

Hawke pushes her needle through the fabric, and then again before answering. “Even Father might have drawn the line at a Tevinter fugitive, though. Remember the tongue-lashing he gave me when he caught me kissing the son of that peddler from Denerim?”

“You were _fourteen_ , missy, and you lied about it to sneak into the tavern,” Mother retorts, arching one groomed, greying eyebrow. Hawke pinches her lips shut. “But you’re not fourteen anymore, and if I had listened to what my parents had to say about Malcolm …” She trails off, instead letting the generations of memories crystallised in the halls of the Amell estate speak for themselves. “I thought, who am I to dictate whom her heart should choose?”

 _Give the lad a chance, Leandra,_ Hawke can almost hear Father say, his warm voice rumbling deep inside his broad chest. _He can’t help what he was, only what he becomes_. She tries to imagine him in Kirkwall, in the restored ancestral house of the Amells, but comes up short. She’s never known her father as a Circle mage, with fine robes and a staff of ironbark inlaid with silver; only as a farmhand with dog hair on his trousers, fingernails caked with fresh-tilled earth, and a laugh that could topple a barn—and she’s glad, suddenly, fiercely, that he wasn’t there to see Lothering fall to the darkspawn, and his youngest daughter with it.

She turns to the bay window, then blinks hard, once, twice. Sunlight flits between the leaves of the alder in the garden when a turtle dove alights on a bobbing branch, neck feathers puffing up around its trilling song. Fenris was no more than another wave eroding the walls of a chasm that already lay open between mother and daughter, dug long ago by grief—but of course Father’s memory would be there to bridge its cliffs, steadfast as ever.

Why else would Mother have shown her the silken handkerchief, kept in the bottom drawer of her jewelry box all this time? Hawke knew at once the splash of red, having spied it sticking out of Father’s pocket so often. Countless times he had reached for it to dry his children’s tears; once he had even knotted it around Carver’s grazed knee until he’d been able to blow the scratch away with a breath of magic, away from prying eyes. The years have long turned the fabric soft and the embroidery slightly downy, but the colour is still bright as blood, and the black birds of the Amell crest, stitched delicately along the hem, unmistakable.

 _It’s an age-old tradition of the Amell family,_ Mother had said, a feathery whistle rising from the bolt of scarlet silk when she ran her fabric shears through it. _A token for the one you’ve grown fond of. I was thinking … perhaps you might want to offer Fenris one?_

Clumsy, as far as apologies went, but it was more than Hawke had ever gotten. Nothing would give her back the chance she never had to mourn her father: she wasn’t even twenty when she had been abandoned to her grief, left to care for the house and the twins on a tavern girl’s piss-poor wages, while Mother spent her days locked in the bedroom she once shared with Malcolm.

Hawke shakes the thought out of her head. She has trod this path often enough now to know it by heart, and yet she trips on the same rocks and gnarled roots every time, reopening the same old wounds as always whenever she stumbles.

She takes a breath, then smiles up at her mother. “Thank you, Mother. I’m relieved to hear I won’t have to elope to Ferelden, after all,” she adds, breaking into laughter when Leandra rolls her eyes, her attempt to suppress an affectionate smile mostly unsuccessful. “So, does that mean you’re willing to give Fenris a chance now?”

“I already have,” Mother answers, a teasing smile curling her lips when Hawke stares at her, uncomprehending. “I had him over for tea last week, as it happens.”

Hawke drops her embroidery hoop into her lap, forgotten. “ _Wait_. Wait, you had Fenris over for tea, and I’m only hearing about this now?” She laughs, incredulous, picturing him frowning at her mother’s collection of doll-sized silver spoons, one gauntleted pinky finger raised as he maneuvers porcelain teacups and saucers to sip on his tea. “How did it go?”

Mother takes her own sweet time answering, stitching the heart of a rose petal while basking in her daughter’s astonishment. “He was a little gruff at first, but unwaveringly polite, and once I got him to try my lemon scones, he started opening up a bit more. He’s quite articulate and well-mannered, it turns out.”

Hawke smiles at the truth of it. “Mh-hm.”

“Very intelligent.”

“That he is.”

“And quite handsome, really.”

“Mother, I saw him first,” she teases, grinning, and a blush rides high on her mother’s cheeks as she laughs. “If I didn’t know any better I’d think _you’re_ trying to seduce him. Your lemon scones, for the Maker’s sake! How am I supposed to compete with that?”

“If you only just followed the recipe, I’m sure you’d manage beautifully, darling. Besides, even if he weren’t entirely too young for me, it’s quite obvious he only has eyes for you.” She looks up at her, a knowing smile on her lips. “He asked about your given name,” she adds without preamble.

Hawke snorts, picking up her hoop again to scratch at a clump of embroidery thread on the half-stitched Amell crest. “Of course, just go and spill my darkest secrets over afternoon tea and scones.”

“Hush. _Amabel_ is a beautiful name. And do you know what Fenris said? He said it sounds like _amare_ , the Tevene word for love.”

She laughs again, but it sounds embarrassingly tentative this time, almost quivering. “Only to make conversation, I’m sure.”

Leandra gives a small shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. He was blushing all the while, though. The lad has great affection for you, that much is certain.”

For once, Hawke has nothing to say to this, no riposte, no retort, no witty dismissal at the ready. She hasn’t gone by her given name in almost a decade now. She was already known as “the Hawke girl” when her father died, and then she wrapped his name around herself like a fur-lined cloak to keep herself warm through the long, cold days ahead. What protection can _Amabel_ afford in comparison, flimsy as a wisp of gauze, wrought out of delicate notes plucked on a lute? Only a woman of incomparable loveliness could have inspired such delightful songs as Cardano wrote for his Amabel, Mother says, but that’s just the thing: it’s a name fit for a composer’s muse, a noblewoman born as such, not for an apostate-cum-refugee who unearthed her claim to nobility in the Deep Roads.

And yet for the first time, Hawke wants some of her namesake’s grace for herself, the loveliness that makes men wax romantic across the ages. _Bastard,_ she thinks, when her vision starts swimming with tears. _Telling my mother this_.

She tugs her embroidery thread taut in hopes of winning back some of her countenance, works her needle along a bird’s black, stylised wing. It was nothing more than a game of pretend at first, a silly bit of make-believe. She hadn’t really planned on giving Fenris the handkerchief, embroidered with her crest. Much too treacly a display for him, always the stoic warrior, silent and still as stone at her back, watching her, guarding her, _protecting_ her despite the magic that burned her mark on the world. But now? To the Void with her reservations, she decides. Just because her hands can spout flames on a whim doesn’t mean she can’t also try to be sweet and gentle for once, at least with Fenris, at least long enough to tell him she—

A sharp sting cuts the thought short. “ _Ow_ ,” Hawke exclaims, blood beading on her fingertip where she jabbed the needle, and Fenris can still taste the coppery tang of it on his tongue once he wakes, feel the throbbing pain in her fingertip as she sucked on the pinprick, muttering “bugger and blast” around it.

Three years. His cowardice cost them _three years_ , and he can never make it up to her, not when Leandra must have died regretting the chance she gave him after he broke her daughter’s heart. But he makes his way up the gleaming staircase of the Hawke estate all the same, hoping that it is not too late to make things right, that he can still honour Malcolm’s and Leandra’s memory the only way he knows: by now taking that chance.

The song of a lute guides his path to Hawke’s bedchamber. She is abed, Maker’s Bark curled up next to her, while Orana sits with the instrument in her lap, deft fingers plucking the strings. The hound’s ears perk up in his direction, but both women remain unaware of his presence, and Fenris cannot help but hover in the doorway for a moment. The melody is swift and light as birdsong, almost playful. The polished rosewood of the lute gleams in the warm glow of the hearth, and once in a while the strings catch the light like spider silk. Orana looks different when she plays, Fenris notes: composed and centered, her hands moving with fluid grace and none of the furtive manner one acquires as a slave in Tevinter.

Head pillowed on her arm, Hawke watches beneath heavy lids. Her clean skin is a half-shade paler than normal under her nightgown, but even so she is beautiful like this, her hair in loose disarray around her face. Tired and pale, perhaps, but _alive_. Fenris remembers all too well the blood clotting her face and matting her hair, and a pang strikes his gut. How much more could he have lost, searching for the wrong thing?

Never again.

He clears his throat to announce himself. When Hawke sees him, she sheds her fatigued expression as though she were shrugging off a coat; Orana rises to her feet and curtseys, one hand wrapped around the angled neck of her lute. “Master Fenris,” she greets him before turning to Hawke. “Shall I leave you with your guest, my lady?”

“Please. Thank you for indulging me, Orana,” she says, then scratches Maker’s Bark behind the ears. “Why don’t you go with her, boy? You’ve been scooped up in here all day.”

The hound snorts and drops his head back on her belly, glaring at Fenris. _Fair enough_ , Fenris thinks, stepping closer. “I will not let harm come to your mistress again, I swear it,” he says, bowing at the mabari and feeling utterly ridiculous for it, but Hawke is Fereldan to the bone, and Maker’s Bark seems to regard him with a little less suspicion at that. “May I be forgiven?”

The hound tilts his head to the side, considering his plea. If Fenris did not know any better, he would think the beast is _enjoying_ watching him squirm. In the end, he barks his approval, tail wagging—Fenris feels more relief at that than he would care to admit—and the promise of a treat sends him padding after Orana, who dips into another curtsey before taking her leave. A mischievous, knowing glint dances in her eye as she closes the door behind herself.

Then they are alone.

Hawke chews her bottom lip, heat pinkening her cheeks. “Well, if that wasn’t the most irresistible thing I’ve ever seen, I don’t know what is.”

Fenris laughs under his breath, his own face warming at her words. “They say a Fereldan’s hound will always come first.” Her eyes light up when he forgoes the armchair in favour of sitting on the edge of the bed. Another pang stabs through him, sharp enough to steal his breath. “I’m sorry.” He tosses the words blindly, addressing nothing and everything at once.

Something hardens in her gaze. “I’m not. He’s dead, and we’re not. I’d do it all over again if I had to.”

“I know.” Fenris sighs. It used to terrify him, that certainty, and it still does, but he will not give in to fear anymore. “I owe you my freedom. The least I could’ve done was to stay by your side after what Danarius has put you through because of me. Forgive me.”

She shakes her head, then smiles. “You’ve done as much for yourself and for me, if not more. And I figured you’d need some time alone after … _well_. You know.” She clears her throat before continuing, her tone light. “Anyway, Aveline stayed the night, and Anders says a couple of days of bedrest and I’ll be ready to tickle the dragon’s tail again.”

Fenris tries a smile. “He did not mean this literally, in case you had any doubts.”

“Spoilsport,” she says around a laugh, then looks at him. “How are youfeeling?”

He shifts on the soft mattress, letting his eyes travel along the damask pattern on the coverlet. He tries to name the dense, tangled mass in his chest, but unsnarling it would take more time than he cares to spare right now. “Danarius is dead, Varania is gone, and yet … everything else feels the same as yesterday. And to find out that I _wanted_ these markings …” He grimaces, the bitter taste of ash rising in his throat.

“Not for their own sake,” she reminds him, not unkindly.

“And for what? Varania spoke as though she would still rather be a slave,” he retorts, then presses his fingers to his eyes. It takes him by surprise, how much it hurts. He never thought he could lose more than what Danarius had already stolen, but loss always finds more to take. Stars beyond counting, yet the night sky will never brim over. “I was a fool to believe the Imperium would have left anything untainted. There was never anything for me there.”

She watches him, her eyes gentle. “That doesn’t make you a fool, Fenris—or else I don’t want to think what that makes me,” she adds, dredging an unexpected laugh out of him. Then she nibbles her lip again for a moment, and he can sense the words dancing on the tip of her tongue. A rare occurrence indeed, Hawke hesitating. “Varric told me you let Varania go,” she finally says.

His gaze slews to the fireplace. Behind the finials of the cast-iron grate, the flames pop and hiss, casting playful shadows on the walls. He hears his name again, a faint whisper on Hawke’s blood-crusted lips. “After what she’s done to you, perhaps I shouldn’t have.” How insignificant Varania had seemed in that moment; Fenris yearns for the indifference he felt then. “But she might as well be dead now. Let her return to Tevinter and sell herself back into slavery if she misses it so.”

Hawke draws a breath, then looses it in the shape of his name. “I know it may not seem like it, but things _have_ changed, I promise. And they’ll keep getting better. I’ll do my damndest to make it so.”

When he drags his gaze in her direction again, the look on her face is so open and frank it startles him. He remembers Alistair, somehow, betrayed too by that estranged sister of his. The Warden had found some semblance of peace in the knowledge, if not the outcome. _The Maker has a sense of humour_ , Fenris thinks. Perhaps he too will see the humour in it one day.

And with Hawke by his side, that day might come sooner than he expects.

“I believe it,” he answers, reaching for her hand.

Crowned by the faint flush on her cheeks, Hawke’s smile could light paths in the dark. “And if it’s family you want,” she continues, her smile sweet, “I have a deadbeat uncle I don’t mind sharing.”

There—already she has him laughing again. Every time he thinks he might forget how to laugh, she finds a way to make him. “You’ve shared enough of the Amells with me, I think,” he answers with a curl of his mouth, brushing his thumb along the pads of her fingers. Three years of dreams and memories, all born out of a mage’s clumsy fingers, a woman’s innermost secret sealed into silk by a drop of Amell blood. Three years ago the blood would have run cold in his veins at the thought, but now he can turn his face to the sun without fear of being burned, and embrace her, magic and all.

For once it is his own heart he lays bare. “I’m yours, Hawke.”

Emotion rushes to her face at his words, mottling her cheeks pink. She blinks the watery gleam out of her eyes, then threads their fingers together and smiles. “I dreamed once that you told me that,” she says as though embarrassed, her eyes shy beneath her lashes. “I remember thinking you’d never say that, not even in my wildest dreams—pun not intended,” she adds, uncharacteristically flustered.

He remembers. The words had risen unbidden to his lips for the first time then, startling her awake. Danarius had owned him, but Hawke—Hawke would let him go if Fenris so chose, and so he is free to give himself to her as he wills.

“This is no dream, I assure you,” he replies, reaching for the bare skin of her arm with the thumb and forefinger of his free hand, “but shall I pinch you to make sure?”

She lets out a strangled laugh and catches his hand in midair, their fingers dovetailing as though they were made for it. “Don’t trouble yourself. I wouldn’t be confined to bed if this were a dream,” she says, grinning; then she blinks, blushing anew, and Fenris is suddenly very aware of the way he is leaning above her, both her hands held in his. Warmth coils low in his stomach. “Although … this isn’t so bad a predicament, all things considered,” she finishes in a breath.

He smiles, humming in agreement. “But it could be better.” He presses her hands back against her pillow, and bends down to close the space between their mouths. Her breath hitches; he smiles against her lips, her surprise headier than wine on his tongue. So much time has been wasted on words, and on the long wait between them, that things can go unuttered now.

There is no flash and burn, no desperation driving his body against hers this time; nothing but gentle heat banking between them as one of her hands slips free to slide into his hair. This is something new, he thinks, and delights in the way Hawke tries to shift closer. It had felt so real when he kissed her in Lothering, dreaming of her dreaming of him, but this? To coax her lips to part, to draw a soft, shivering moan from her throat as water from a well—this _is_ real. This kiss is a promise made and kept, binding them as thread in silk.

Fenris yields to the gentle pull of her arms and slips into her bed. The sheets hold the warmth of her body, and the muslin of her shift is so thin he can already feel the silken heat of her skin under his palms. He sinks into her embrace, redolent of that Orlesian soap she indulges in, and tilts her mouth to his to deepen the kiss. Her fingers run up and down the channel of his spine, trace circles on his shoulder blades, slip up the nape of his neck to tangle themselves in his hair.

Her touch—how he missed it. Of all the things he thought he could do without, perhaps this astonishes him the most: that someone’s hands on him, someone’s mouth on his, something he had abhorred for so long could feel so good once he welcomes it. A wave of desire surges through him when her legs close around his hips; Fenris parts their lips not without effort, embarrassed at his body betraying its want for hers so transparently.

Looking at her then is a mistake: her lips are gleaming red, her hair scattered on her pillow, and her eyes shine bright above the flush on her cheeks. She looks back at him, trailing a finger down his ear. “Fenris,” she whispers into the eddies of their breaths, “do you think your memories might come back again? If we … if we make love, I mean.”

 _If we make love_. A phrase too pretty by far to have belonged in his world until now. Slaves do not make love; all he has ever known is pleasure for its own sake—taken, not made—and he understands, too late, what that night had meant to her three years ago. Had she been any less mad, he would have long lost her to his own folly.

“Perhaps,” he answers, though he knows this is not what Hawke is asking. “I have better than memories now, however,” he finishes, knowing it for the truth. He will run no longer, whatever should shake itself loose from the broken corners of his mind.

Whatever his past holds, he holds his future in his arms.

Hawke does not smile, but some last brittle shadow frays away at the bottom of her eyes, and what lies in her heart shines straight through. Something twists in his chest, stirring against hers. “Alright,” she breathes.

“You should be resting, however,” he forces himself to say, his voice rough even to his own ears.

One corner of her mouth curls into a lopsided smile. She slides one foot up his leg, sending a shiver of renewed desire through him. “Well, I’m in bed, aren’t I? What more do you want?”

Arguing against Hawke’s elusive, shifting logic is an exercise in futility at the best of times, and Fenris is not so strong that he can attempt it now. Instead he answers her question by closing the distance between their lips to kiss her again. Her mouth falls open under his, and he drinks the soft, breathy moan that escapes her throat. The tips of their tongues brush against each other, gentle, almost tentative. Her fingers twist into his shirt; her legs hook around his waist, and even through the fabric of her nightgown he can feel the tips of her breasts hardening under his touch.

This is nothing like their first night together. He had been trying to stamp himself out in their frantic collision then, the wild, raging heat of their bodies like a firelit ring in the night, keeping away the things that lurk in the shadows of his memory. As much as he wanted Hawke, then—and oh, how he wanted her—he had been chasing something she could not give him.

But now, he can take his time.

He traces her body with his hands and mouth, committing to memory each dip and swell of her curves, the soft edge of her earlobe, the pulsing hollow of her throat, the rise and fall of her breasts under him. Hawke kisses his lips, his jaw, his hair; she grips his shoulders and arcs her body into the descending trail of his mouth. She is warm even through her nightgown, even warmer when his fingers slip under the hem and climb up her thighs and hips to find her skin bare. Warmth floods his stomach at the discovery; so erotic is it he finds himself fully erect at once, groaning at the sudden strain. Hawke looses a breath in answer, latticed with a thin thread of voice that winds the heat in his belly even tighter.

Her thighs part before him. Her body makes it no secret how much it craves his touch, the folds of her sex already glistening. He sweeps kisses down her thighs, smiles against the gooseflesh prickling the skin under his mouth. A light brush of his finger has her muffling a moan into her pillow, her body taut as a harp string already.

 _Patience,_ he wills himself as he bends his mouth to her. She tastes even sweeter than he remembers, but he resists the heady, honeyed musk of her, and coaxes her pleasure into a gentle slope with gentle, feathery strokes of his tongue. Her small, breathless noises swell to fill the room before long, and she gasps the Maker’s name when Fenris sweeps his arms around her hips to tug at her nightgown, exposing the creamy expanse of her stomach. An eager lover, Hawke, and shameless about her desires: her hands cover his and guide his caresses over her belly and her breasts; she nearly crests under his mouth then, but he lets the rising tide of her pleasure ebb away once, tearing a cry out of her that has his hips rocking against her bed once, much to his own embarrassment. Her own hips rise off the bed to meet his mouth; her curled toes run up and down his back. Soon he has her begging wordlessly, hands wound into his hair, until she sobs his name and Fenris himself cannot stand it any longer. He looks up her body to watch her coming undone, her face twisted in free, careless ecstasy, before it smooths again as her entire body shudders under him.

He works her through the aftershocks of her climax, until she falls back against her pillows with a breathless laugh. The ache of his own arousal is a small price to pay for the sight of her flushed and disheveled, limbs strewn on her bed, legs loose around the thatch of black, wet hair. “Oh, _Maker_ ,” she sighs through a blissful smile, eyes glinting at him from under heavy lids.

Fenris licks her taste off his lips, then wipes his chin with his sleeve. “Will you rest now?” he asks, unable to keep the smugness out of his voice.

Of course she would have other ideas. He finds himself falling back against her pillows before he even knows it, Hawke straddling him. The nightgown rucks up around her hips as she shifts against him, drawing a hiss of anticipation out of him. “We have _three years_ to catch up on, Fen,” she says, fumbling with the clasps of his tunic. Her hands become questioning when it parts open, and something like contrition peers in those eyes he has come to know so well. “If … if you want,” she falters.

 _There she is_ , he thinks. _Amabel, sweet as a song_. “I do, though not at the expense of your recovery,” he murmurs, but his desire burns as an open flame, and the knowledge that she too wants him so, even hotter. He slides his hands up her thighs to the hem of her gown, his resolve crumbling. “Say so if you tire. I will not be the one telling the mage what happened if you pass out while supposedly on bedrest.”

She grins, batting her lashes innocently. “Won’t you have to if I’m passed out?”

The nightgown flies off her body at that, billowing in the soft, muted light before draping itself on a corner of the bed, and Fenris’s retort dies on his tongue. It seems impossible that a woman so beautiful should exist, much less turn her gaze to him. He still does not understand—of all the lovers she has had, or could have had, better men and women than him by far—that she should have chosen him.

Something hollow threatens to gape open inside him, but he draws her to himself, and it closes again together with the distance between their mouths. Her breasts press against his chest as she bends to kiss him, blindly tugging the laces of his trousers. She only allows their lips to part at his urging, so that he may shed the clothes that keep his skin from hers. Together they do away with his clothes in seconds, and then he is naked before her.

Or almost.

Slowly, as if to give him time to object, she unknots the favour around his wrist, then drops it on the bed somewhere behind her, forgotten just as soon. His blood pounds under her gaze, his desire plain to see, nothing to hide behind except his scars. Her eyes roam his body, then her touch, her fingers trailing gentle paths in the spaces between the brands. Where he might have expected pain, there is naught but a sweet ache at last fulfilled: her touch holds no threat, only magic made safe, the answering call to the lone song of the lyrium.

How much has he longed for this? Now that they lie skin against skin again, the quick, guilty relief of that night’s stolen memory seems a laughable substitute. Her mouth, her hands, the honeysuckle scent of her hair as it sweeps the lines of lyrium on his body—no dream, no memory, no demon, nothing that belongs to the Fade could ever come close to the realness of her. When he thinks that it is impossible to feel pleasure any purer, Hawke twines their fingers together again and guides him inside her as they hold hands palm to palm, and all thought melts away into the nigh unbearable heat of her.

He finds he cannot close his eyes, gazing up in wonder as her body ripples above him in all its bare glory. Her bottom lip caught between her teeth, she too watches him, as though naught matters but him. Her breasts and curves are fuller now; the Arishok’s blade has left a raised, pearlescent scar on her belly, and a handful of thin, white scars hew her limbs. Too often Fenris forgets that under the quips and smiles hides a fighter, perhaps the fiercest he knows, and he curses both the hands that dealt the blows and himself, for not having been there to worship the flesh that bears them—

No. He would not have loved her as well had he stayed, three years ago, and he shuts that thought away once and for all.

A surprised gasp breaches Hawke’s lips when Fenris pulls himself up to hold her close. She throws her arms around his neck and plants her feet on the mattress; their mouths meld together into a frantic, feverish kiss while their bodies move as one, and this time there is nothing to take them apart—not even himself.

* * *

“I can’t believe you’ve held on to this bloody thing all this time,” Hawke says later, once their breaths and heartbeats have evened out again.

She drapes herself over him to snatch the favour from where it hangs off the tassel of a pillow. Then she rests her head in the crook of his shoulder, examining the handkerchief in the ruddy light that streams through her curtains, heralding nightfall. Watching her now, brow puckered at the Amell crest embroidered on the corner, Fenris sees her as he saw her once in a dream, stitching a wish into a measure of scarlet silk. “It was a reminder,” he explains after a moment, winding strands of smooth black hair around his fingers, “of what I could not have.”

Under his hand, her shoulders heave with a sigh; her breath washes over his neck, warm as a summer breeze. “You have me now, Fenris. You’ve always had me.”

He does not say anything. He knows that now—now that the man who owned him is dead, now that the last of the chains have rusted away into the confused tangles of his past, now that he has glimpsed some of love’s ever-shifting shapes in countless dreams. Fenris drops a kiss on the crown of her head for sole answer, just because he can, then another on her lips when she tilts her face towards his. Somewhere in the estate, Orana is playing the lute again, a gentle reminder that there is a world outside the bedchamber, and he resolves to inquire about those songs that gave Hawke her name.

She folds the silk into a thin strip, but he stops her when she attempts to loop it around his wrist again. “Perhaps,” he starts when she raises questioning eyes at him, “perhaps it is time to let go of the past.”

Hawke sits up, the coverlet falling off her body. The roseate points of her breasts tighten in the cool air, and astonishingly, arousal, far from spent as he first thought, stirs in his belly again at the sight. She rustles the silk between her fingers for a moment. “You’re sure?” she asks, throwing him a meaningful look.

“Yes,” he whispers.

“Sure sure?”

He laughs under his breath. “ _Yes_.”

She gathers the handkerchief into her palms, and the familiar, not unpleasant tingle of her magic brushes his markings half a heartbeat before the silk starts burning between her hands. Firelight shivers over her face and dances in her eyes, weaving threads of gold into her hair, and never has there been a woman as beautiful as Hawke then, burning away the last of his heart’s shadows. The fabric crumples and sputters under the bright fire of her magic, smouldering edges curling over themselves like paper scrolls, yet Fenris feels at peace. He is hers, as she is his, regardless of a scrap of silk and a drop of magic.

“Maker’s _balls_ ,” Hawke chokes out, grimacing at the smell of burned feathers that rises from the charred, crispy ash in her hands. “That was a better idea in my head.”

Fenris breaks out into laughter, throwing an arm over his eyes. “ _Hawke_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story was planned as three parts, approximating 5,000 words each, but at some point I realised I was merely along for the ride, and now here we are, some 60,000 words later. It may not be much by fanfic standards, but this has ended up my longest completed project to date, and I’m proud of all that I’ve learned and accomplished with it … even as there are so many things I wish I would’ve done differently, even in this chapter. Some of my friends know just how much I doubted myself in regards to this story, and I still do, in fact—it’s hard to resist the need to read it over “just one last time” but I think at this point I need to let this story be and speak for itself.
> 
> I can’t say how much I appreciate the support and comments I’ve gotten over the past months. Thank you, so much, for reading this through to the end, and I really hope this last part was worth the wait! ♥ I would love to hear your thoughts, as always, and feel free to find me on [Tumblr](https://aban-asaara.tumblr.com/) and say hello!

**Author's Note:**

> 


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